Hundred Year Picnic Mr.

David Alma The Schloss Brunn In The Palace of The Doges Sweet Emeraph The World Let Us Sit in The Shade Home 1968 The Whore at Carmen Bajo Faceless

Mr. David Alma Look at the well dressed man buying coffee from the street vendor. This man is Mr. David Alma. With his trim haircut, smart suit and shined shoes, there is little to remind anyone that Mr. Alma was once a street beggar in the ancient city of Tirzah, some six hundred years before Christ. If you already know this, then you are gifted with a heightened awareness of some things and you shouldnt waste any more of your valuable time with me. Its true. Mr. Alma spent his days dressed in filthy rags, crawling the streets while he choked on dirt blown into his parched mouth by the wind, burning under an ancient sun. He spoke his prayers to gods that even then were almost forgotten, and grabbed at passerby with his rotting fingers begging for scraps of food like an animal. They kicked him to the the ground or spat into his eyes, those pitiful eyes filled with dust and sand. But today Mr. Alma is not begging but quickly grabbing a cup of coffee at the corner of 5th Avenue and 30th Street in New York City on the 4th of June 2011, a time and place that knows nothing of the great city of Tirzah, which now exists as a small pile of stones somewhere in the Palestinian territories. Of course, Mr. Almas memory does not stretch back to his life in Tirzah. The fearsome temples and desert sun he looked upon are nowhere to be found under his eyelids, the language he used each day to plead for crumbs is a complete stranger to his tongue. If someone on the street called out to him by the name he went by in Tirzah, he would never stop to look back. Perhaps it is better this way. Mr. Alma is doing better in New York City than he ever did in Tirzah, in fact he is doing quite well for himself. He works as an account man at a well regarded ad agency, where he has his own secretary and a spacious office. Today he woke up a

little later than usual and did not have the time to make coffee with his french press as he does each morning, and had to buy coffee on the go. It is inferior to the coffee that he would have freshly brewed in his kitchen with his choice coffee beans, he makes a face as he drinks it. It irritates him. But having to drink this unsatisfying cup of coffee is much less of a misfortune than being trampled and spat upon in the streets, but Mr. Alma no longer knows anything about that. If he did remember, he might be in a cheerier mood this morning. In fact, every one of his days might be better. His first thought each day would be I am David Alma and I have a good job in a good city, and even if it is raining outside or if the subway is exceptionally crowded, it is far superior to the days when I used to beg for bread crumbs in the streets of Tirzah. Mr. Alma will never think this. If you say anything like this to him, he will tell you that you are a crazy person. Lets think of the man who just sold Mr. Alma the mediocre cup of coffee. Does he know anything of Mr. Almas past? Most definitely not. If he did, he would not be selling coffee on a street corner. No one knows anything about anothers past life, this is why you would righty call them a crazy person if they say they did. However, even if he knows nothing of it the coffee seller may have treated Mr. Alma differently because of his past as a street beggar. These past lives are not as invisible to others as you might believe, rather they are like shadows. They are attached to us forever, and they can be seen by others, more and less clearly depending on the time of day, the senses of the person you are interacting with, and other variables yet unclear to us. Full knowledge of the persons history will not be realized by the other, but they may sense it, which is enough to dictate their behavior.

That could explain why the coffee seller acted rather rudely to Mr. Alma. His regular customers would describe him as a polite, occasionally funny man who treats everyone with respect. But when he served Mr. Alma this morning he snatched the customers dollars from his hand with great force and thrust the styrofoam cup into Mr. Almas hands with such power that it seemed he was throwing it. Never once did he offer the customer a hello or goodbye. Though he said nothing, Mr. Alma was offended as it seemed that the coffee seller wanted to have nothing to do with him and had attempted to make their transaction as short and impersonal as possible. As Mr. Alma walks down the street sipping his disappointing purchase, thinking of how the coffee seller treated him, other memories are brought to his attention and he realizes that throughout his life he has met people that instantly took a strong disliking to him and sought to immediately escape his presence, although he had done nothing to deserve such treatment. In each of these experiences the behavior of the others followed a pattern, as if they were preconditioned to act like that towards him. Mr. Almas suspicions are correct, but for reasons that he does not understand. He is an intelligent man, but limited by human awareness. If he was more aware of things, he would also realize that his behavior towards other people has at times been dictated by his perceptions of their pasts. Take his secretary, a lovely young woman named Miko Takahashi. Miko enjoys her job at the agency, likes Mr. Alma, lives in a fashionable yet affordable neighborhood and has a wonderful relationship with her thoughtful and caring boyfriend Nicholas, who is planning to propose to her in the coming week. When he proposes to her she will cry for several minutes, then joyfully agree and continue living a happy and satisfying life.

Miko did not always have such good luck in life. She used to live in Paris at the turn of the 18th century. She found herself an orphan at twelve years old following the public execution of her parents during the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution. She barely fed herself by working small jobs in the city, given to her by families that pitied her but were too poor themselves to support her for any period of time. Eventually she found a man that told her he could give her steady work, provide her with three meals a day, and above all, protect and look after her. That was how she came to be a prostitute at the age of fourteen. She was terribly abused by the clients, and her benefactor gradually removed her freedoms until she was all but imprisoned in her room. She had become pregnant, a fact that she tried to hide in fear that the man would take the baby away. At six months pregnant she decided to take her own life, and by extension the childs, so that it would never have to experience the world that she was leaving behind. As you can guess, Miko does not have any memories of her prostitution, the unborn child or the suicide. But there are those that can sense these things behind Mikos bright eyes and sparkling smile. They look at her and succumb to a powerful, profound sadness, and for reasons they cannot explain, feel nothing but pity for the poor woman, their eyes misshapen by despair. Indeed, Miko has met many people in her life that have given her more chances or accepted more excuses from her than they would from others. Mr. Alma has granted Miko extra sick days and often allows her to come in late, as he feels too sorry for her to ever reprimand the woman. The degree to which an individual can sense anothers history may come in and out, and it changes from person to person. Nicholas, Mikos soon to be fiance, has never sensed his girlfriends life in the Parisian brothels and her unborn child, has never taken pity on Miko and

never felt great sadness for her. But senses flux. One day in the future Nicholas may wake up next to his wife and feel that she is a pathetic creature that need his sympathy. On another day Mr. Alma may no longer feel like Miko deserves extra sick days or can afford to arrive to the office late. An individual that Mr. Alma and several of the senior men at the office are attuned to is a nice young man named Jimmy OBrien, an NYU student interning at the ad agency, where he was supposed to work at copywriting but has mostly been making coffee and moving furniture. Jimmy is quite bright and very enthusiastic, and it is a shame that his talents are not being used. But Jimmy is very polite and a bit shy, and he doesnt have it in him to ask Mr. Alma or anyone else at the office when he will do the copywriting work the job description promised him. It is unfortunate for Jimmy that he does not ask, because Mr. Alma would instantly concede and give Jimmy anything that he wanted. There are several other account men at the office that also feel this way. They wont say it out loud, but these men loathe being in the very presence of Jimmy. They feel uneasy around the intern, and none will dare to make eye contact with him. When the men find themselves in the same space as Jimmy the first thing they think of is escape, an escape that they will only attempt if Jimmy is looking in the other direction. This is because Jimmy OBrien once held the rank of Obergruppenfuhrer in the Waffen SS, acting as the commanding officer of the Sauschenbrueck concentration camp from 1942 to 1945. At Sauschenbrueck Jimmy was responsible for the deaths of thousands and made a point to take part in executions himself to prove to his subordinates that all Germans had a duty to cleanse the Reich with their own hands, regardless of rank. He enforced ruthless discipline at the camp, and the camp guards feared him just as much as the prisoners did.

Lets take a look back to where we started, with Mr. Alma. Mr. Alma has now finished his coffee and is walking down sixteenth street. This is odd, as Mr. Alma has passed by his agency ten blocks ago. There is a very strange look in Mr. Almas eyes, a look that lets you know right away that the agency is the furthest thing from his mind. There are strange visions filling his eyes, like an oil spill blossoming in a lake, spreading itself over everything that had been natural and clear. Sights that he cannot make sense of mighty city walls, temples stretching to the heavens, chariot teams in grand parades pulling the idols of gods whose names are no longer possible to pronounce, the flowing robes of priests and priestesses dyed in colors that have been lost to history. He sees all of this in his mind, eyes shut tight, and when he reopens them he is genuinely surprised to find that he is still in New York City. He closes and opens his eyes several more times, repeating the exercise. Each time he sees this other world, each time it is just as detailed and vibrant. After keeping his eyes open longer, his world of New York in plain view, he calls to mind that other world with the same effectiveness. With a feeling of half thrill, half panic, he realizes that these unexplained visions carry the qualities of memory. His nostrils, attuned to the aroma of grilled sausage coming form a vendor, suddenly bring him an unpleasant smell that he instantly recalls as the odor of a camel, then rich smells belonging to spices in a marketplace, spices whose impossibly foreign names seem to be just barely out of reach for his tongue. It isnt too long before he can here the sounds of that marketplace, a language he has never heard yet is beginning to understand, the braying of camels and the sound of strange music.

Yes, that most rare and fantastic of events seems to be happening to Mr. Alma at this moment, before our very eyes, an event not expected in the least. The resurgence of history, memory triumphantly breaking out of its prison somewhere in the dark, uncharted regions of the mind and pushing its way through cracks in the surface, like a weed through pavement, a weed connected to a system of roots larger than the deepest glacier.. These kind of events are legend, said to happen once in a century, some claim to have witnessed them but often they are never proven. Mr. Alma doubles up in the street as he remembers. He drops his empty styrofoam cup to the ground. He remembers the love of his mother and her death, the bond he shared with the brother that never returned from the wars, the city that he had loved and lost, spending the rest of his days crawling in the streets, starvation boiling his brain. Loves and losses, triumphs and disasters, experienced in how many years he cant possibly say, was it thirty years or three hundred, it doesnt make a difference, all he knows is that its there again, its all in his memory and at his command and growing stronger every second whether he wants it too or not and its spreading to other parts of his mind, new parts of his history that he has never dreamed of. It is at that moment that a Greyhound bus strikes Mr. Alma, killing him instantly. He was crawling through the middle of the street in his fine suit, paused with one hand pressed against his temples and one hand reaching out in front of him, in a way that implied a desperate reach for something that was far beyond the distance his arm was extended, something beyond any distance that he could comprehend.

The Schloss Brunn In a country meadow outside of Vienna there is a crumbling, decaying palace. Vines grow wild and lush around its black marble walls and penetrate through broken windows. Each year the plants grow bolder. Squirrels, birds, and insects build themselves nests in once magnificent halls of white marble and black granite , making a home out of the strange structure melting into the wild. During the the Second World War, Soviet troops occupied it and broke down its 26 seat dining room table for firewood and ashed government issue cigarettes against its grand piano. For the young men of the surrounding towns, spending a night in the strange, black palace in the woods has taken the place of edelweiss as the badge of masculinity. The grand estate buried in a tomb of forest once had a name, as all corpses do. As often happens in death, the name has worn away over the years, now dimly remembered only by a few souls dangerously close to becoming corpses themselves. This place of ruin was christened in 1909 as the Schloss Brunn, the most celebrated work of modern architecture in Europe, and the most expensive private residence ever built in Austria by someone without Hapsburg blood. * The Schloss Brunn spent decades as a dream within the mind of Oskar Brunn, born in 1868 as the first son of a failed government clerk that could barely pay the rent for the squalid, two room apartment he provided his wife and eight children with in a Vienna slum. It was in that miserable dwelling that the Schloss Brunn was conceived in the womb of the boys imagination. The cockroaches skittering across the creaking floor boards turned into servants bustling back and forth in long coat tails, clicking their heels on waxed mahogany floors. The single toilet in the hallway shared with a dozen other tenants became their carriage house. The stained print of

the Virgin that his mother wept to every night was the fine oil painting of an illustrious ancestor, invariably hunting wild boar or leading an imperial regiment. Each blow the boy received from his father was a spar with his fencing partner, at a match attended by the Emperor himself. And so the dream of the Schloss Brunn grew embryonic in the fertile imagination of young Oskar, a fetus feeding on the warm, dark places of his mind that produced dreams. It took many different shapes through his school boy years. It was a castle with high towers and walls of formidable stone, whose very sight would deprive Oskars enemies of any hope of breaking him. The boys who mocked and beat him at school would wither away in the cold, stone dungeons under his royal banquet hall. In time this fortress lowered its defenses and saw its once bare walls sprout golden Rococo sea shells, its battlements replaced by Baroque sculpture. The armories and dungeons became great libraries and treasure rooms. Halls filled with mirrors framed in gold, each a dozen times wider and longer than that of Versailles sprouted within the palace, making it a maze of splendor. This labyrinthine palace displayed its thousands of windows proudly, without defense, for its purpose was to impress all of the lowly serfs that stood outside gazing with wonder and longing at the world that Oskar had built within. The other boys, those who laughed at his fraying clothes and rotting shoes, would one day find themselves knocking on the door of that palace, begging for a peek inside to relieve them from the misery of their own lives, if only for a moment. He would politely turn then away. Later, this Baroque palace spread out to become a Roman Villa, sprouting lush courtyards lined by Corinthian columns of immaculate marble. In these gardens, amid the soft gurgling of fountains and the sweet songs of birds of paradise, Oskar would charm the women he desired

and make love to them in one of many lavish, perfumed bed chambers, under a ceiling fresco rich with mythic heroes, painted by a Venetian master. Surely, all of the girls that had shunned Oskar in favor of boys with enough money to take them to a cafe or a show would arrive at the Villas golden gates. They would be burning with desire for him, the Emperor of this paradise. The Schloss Brunn grew larger and stranger in his mind, the placenta fed a fresh supply of jealousy, spite, shame, and anger each day. As a young man Oskar became apprenticed to a merchant who had fought with his father in a distant military campaign long since forgotten by the Empire. When not learning the merchants trade the boy could be found in libraries, hunkered over books of architecture and history. In those books he planned the perfect features of the Schloss Brunn. Although he came to recognize the Classical, Gothic, Mannerist, Jacobean, Baroque, Palladian, Rococo, and a hundred other movements, any real meaning or purpose of their aesthetic was lost on him. Their context or artistry was of no concern for Oskar, only that their display would prove his superiority over others. Over a decade, Oskar mastered the craft of the merchant. His mind focused only on the acquisition of wealth and the palace that it would provide him with, the prize promised to him all of his miserable life. Through an exceptional business acumen Oskar built his own fortune, emerging as a prominent member of Viennas new bourgeoisie, spawned from the furnaces of the industrial revolution. These new rich appeared just as Vienna demolished its medieval walls and began work on the Ringstrasse to become a modern, planned city. They possessed wealth that rivaled the rotting aristocracy, but had no titles, no fabled family line, no ancestral estates. In short, great wealth without a great past. The bourgeoisie sought to create an illusory past by building lavish

homes filled with ornament that plundered the past without rhyme or reason. Neo-Gothic spires crowned Baroque facades held up by classical columns. Furnishings and decorations from three centuries collided with each other. Young Viennese artists mocked the bourgeoisie, who they derided as tasteless fools trying to gain respectability by making cluttered antique stores out of their own homes. The young artists were developing a new style of art that would take Vienna by storm. These artists wanted to remove themselves from the clutter of past generations of art by creating a wholly new aesthetic that would compliment itself in every way. This movement would be dubbed Zeitgerecht - the modern. Zeitgerecht would liberate the young artists from the chains of history, and allow them to create a glorious future from pure art. The influences and forces shaping Zeitgerecht were many - Japanese illustration, the curves of nature, repeating pattern - but the greatest ideal of the style was Gesamtkunstwerk, the brainchild of the eccentric architect Oktav Kolomann. Gesamtkunstwerk became the altar that the young artists worshipped at. Its meaning was total work of art. The artists sought to apply their style of art to every visual aspect of their lives. The design of clothing, art, ornament, architecture, illustration, decoration - all coordinated to create an environment of total stylistic harmony. The quality of life would be enhanced by the absorption of life by art. Life itself became an art form. After a series of exhibitions whose scandal gripped the attention of the gossiping bourgeoisie, the artists dismissed by the citys artistic elite became the darlings of the new rich. The Zeitgerecht artists opened their own design firm, the Wiener Werkstatte, or Vienna Workshop, that attracted the bourgeoisie like bees to a sticky honey pot. The wealthy spared no

expense in hiring the artists to design their entire lifestyle from their windowpanes to their tea pots. Like many of their well to do patrons, Oskar Brunn had no idea what these avant garde designers were talking about. He didnt even appreciate their style, which to him lacked the refinement and elegance of old Europe. What Oskar did understand was the look of awe in the faces of his wealthy friends when another announced that the Vienna Workshop would be designing their new parlor, or dropped the name of the young Zeitgerecht artist who would be painting the mural in their dining room. Zeitgerecht and Gesamtkunstwerk were meaningless to Oskar, but pride and jealousy were his defining traits. If the Schloss Brunn was to grant him the respectability and superiority he had always dreamed of, it would have to be the perfect temple of Gesamtkunstwerk, down to the most minute detail. The birth of the Schloss Brunn was approaching. In 1893 Oskar married Maria Kiesl, a beautiful young debutante whose father made his riches as an arms manufacturer. When Herr Kiesl unexpectedly passed away from consumption, his considerable wealth was added to the fortune that Oskar had already amassed. At the turn of the century Oskar found himself one of the wealthiest men in Vienna. Maria had given birth to three children and wanted a larger home, one suited to raising the new aristocracy. One Thursday morning Oskar strolled casually and confidently into the Vienna Workshop, and demanded an audience with Oktav Kolomann. The genius architect, an albino whose tangled, unruly coiffure seemed less like a hairstyle and more like a permanent snow storm above his scalp, scoffed at Oskars commission. Kolomann and his partners had work commissioned through the next seven months, how did Oskar expect them to drop it all and build

a mansion somewhere in the countryside? As they argued, Kolomann was struck with an idea that appealed to his appreciation for cruel and complicated jokes. In the midst of the discussion, Kolomann suddenly announced that he would take on the project. He would work on a preliminary design of the house, the crowning jewel of Gesamtkunstwerk as Oskar requested. All Kolomann would require is a check from Oskar, based on the cost estimate. As arranged, Oskar met Kolomann at the Central Cafe the next Friday afternoon. Seated at a table that bore ring stains left by Sigmund Freud were all the artists and designers of the workshop. Kolomann had brought them along to witness how he would humiliate this merchant who found himself so important. Oskar, strictly business, shunned small talk and demanded to see the plans immediately. With glee Kolomann produced the plans for the Schloss Brunn. He had locked himself away in his studio for virtually the entire previous week, indulging every artistic whim in its design. Deep bags bordered his eyes, and he had arrived to the cafe early to consume three cups of strong Wiener melange before meeting Oskar. Kolomann began to discuss the artistic intricacies and and ambitions he had for Oskars future home. All the while Oskar nodded along like a front row student trying to impress a professor. As Kolomann had expected, Oskar eventually interrupted him. Oktav, he spoke, how much will this cost? Kolomann took the cloth napkin out of his lap and gestured towards the sculptor to his right for a fountain pen. With the pen he wrote the ludicrous sum of money on the cloth, suppressed a high pitched giggle, folded it and passed it to Oskar. Oskar unfolded the napkin, glanced at the sum for exactly four seconds, balled it up and dropped it on the ground. With enough force to cause a nearby saucer to wobble, Oskar rose from his seat, and shot his arm

towards the monochromatic architect. Kolomann instinctively flinched, thinking that his practical joke had upset the rich man to the degree of physical reprisal. But when he opened his eyes, Kolomann saw not a fist but an outspread palm. Behind that palm was a joyous face, a face never before worn in public by the merchant. While a confused Kolomann shook Oskars hand, a hand that could snap the delicate fingers of an artist in two, Oskar let him know that the plans were splendid and that he would like to know when Kolomann and his workshop could begin work. A dumbfounded Kolomann shook Oskars hand, the force causing the snowstorm above the architects head to bob up and down. After beginning a series of responses in his throat, each swallowed back down like failed vomit attempts, Kolomann let him know that they would drop all current and listed orders to begin preliminary work for the palace at the beginning of the next work week. Just after the handshake, Kolomann readjusted himself to the new circumstances, once again becoming the haughty, self assured artist. He gave Oskar a very serious look and began to speak. - Oskar, he said, you realize the grave importance of Gesamkunstwerk, and the full extant to which it must be observed and preserved? Nothing in these designs can ever be changed, during the planning and construction or afterwards. The change of any object, even if its is a single door knob, would be an iconoclasm. Gesamkunstwerk goes even beyond the physical; you, your family, even guests, must amend your own lifestyles so that your physical presence is in harmony with the work of art that is your home. Your life must become art itself. Can you fully accept Gesamkunstwerk?

Oskar nodded enthusiastically, his face shining with the unique glow that belongs only to lovers and madmen, and made his rounds at the table to deliver his firm handshake to each bewildered artist. In that way the dream born of a destitute childhood spilled out of Oskars head and splattered onto the hard floor of reality, where it would soon take a course its dreamer could neither predict or control. While his workshop worked feverishly to design the palace, from its floor plan to its tea service, Kolomann traveled to the country side with Oskar to visit plots prospected for the Schloss Brunn. Kolomann had begun to warm to his client, influenced by Oskars offer to have a servant carry the Japanese umbrella the albino always hid under in the daytime. A generous piece of land, able to accommodate the titanic dimensions born from the mens respective egos was purchased on site from its bewildered owner for a price far above its value. Land was broken in 1903. Oskars fantasy, made flesh through brick and mortar, would slowly take its form through the next four years. True to the philosophy of gesamtkunstwerk, Kolomann personally designed not only the four story, sixty room house but virtually everything inside of it, from the furniture to the lighting, to the door handles to the kitchen silverware. It was a design project the likes of which Europe had never seen. The papers were calling it the last great symphony of the city called home by Mozart and Beethoven - the entire residence, from the biggest chunk of marble to the smallest sugar spoon, were instruments in a single, perfect orchestra. The enormous exterior was composed of shining, jet black marble blocks encased in molded bindings, stacked atop of one another. Each railing grill and window frame, painted in gold leaf, was a flowing sculpture. Its tallest point was directly in the center of the Palace, a five

story tower that rose into a plateau with four marble cubes in each of its corners. Within the plateau, contained by the cubes was a vast open sculpture - a sphere composed of intertwined, wrought iron laurel leaves gilded in gold. This was the crown of the Schloss Brunn, the poets laurel. The sleek and ornate exterior was a jewel box for the cultivated and precious lifestyle that it was built to hold. Constructed through white marble and black swedish granite, the interior was an elegant interplay of black and white, with occasional gold details that shone under crystal chandeliers. True to the demands of his client, Kolomann spared no expense in the decoration of the home. Cryptic, abstract murals composed of flowing curves and swirls were etched into the black marble walls and painted in with gold leaf. These same patterns were reproduced through out the home, inlaid in the blade of a butcher knife, framing the quartz fire place. This pattern became a central theme of the home, even guiding Kolomanns placement of furniture. A home cinema was installed, the first of its kind in Europe. It had space for an in house orchestra that would provide music to the silent films. There was a music room dominated by an enormous electrical organ, whose strange new sounds could be heard in every room in the house through an innovative sound filtering system. An elevator was installed, with golden bars, that only Oskar was brave enough to ride. On the left wing of the fourth floor was a vast room that served as both a sculpture garden and chess board. Massive playing pieces, designed by the most modern of Viennese sculptors and chiseled from the same marble that formed the palaces walls, stood atop a marble floor of alternating black and white checks. Special devices were engineered to move them during play, only to be operated by servants and with great difficulty. The ceiling

above this lovely chess game could be retracted, like the ceiling of the Roman Colosseum, to make the room into a courtyard. The main parlor was made to compete with Viennas most popular evening clubs. The chairs and seats, upholstered in exquisite white leather, could seat over sixty people. The back wall, a long, red velvet tapestry decorated with gold thread, could be drawn up to reveal a stage in case the guests needed entertainment. The kitchens were entirely constructed with a strange new ore that shone like polished plate armor. Imported from France, they called it stainless steel. Kolomann, after meeting with some of Paris greatest chefs, even provided a special cook book filled with recipes that would complement and enhance the artistic mission of the home. The largest single room in the house was the indoor gardens, dominating the central section of the third floor. The guiding force and inspiration for the gardens were a trio of peacocks hand selected by Kolomann, after traveling Europe and the near east for the specimens that would best complement his artistic vision. Although he was initially afraid of using an element of decoration whose organic nature might compromise its permanence, he was able to purchase the entire peacock breeders stock and move it to a nearby farm to ensure a steady supply of perfect peacocks. The gardens ceilings, floor, and walls were made of jet black marble, forming a shining box that reflected the glorious colors of the flora, which were rooted in soil beds framed by quartz. Kolomann wanted every color present in the feathers of the peacocks to be found in the flowers and plants in the garden. A harmony of flora and fauna. In the pay of Oskar, explorers searched the depths of the Amazon and secret, uncharted islands to find the pigments of the

peacock in plant life. They succeeded, and whatever it cost in both money and human life is not recorded in Kolomanns books. A small army of servants, all wearing matching uniforms designed by Kolomann, kept the rare and priceless plants watered to the exact number of drops. To provide light Kolomann designed hollow pillars constructed of Murano glass imported from Venice that ran from the ceiling above the plants, and through the fourth floor above it into the sky. These pillars also served as ornamentation. The area of the fourth floor above the garden became known as the forest of light, a large, surreal room filled only with glass pillars shining with sunlight. There were many spaces in the house that were considered strange and wholly impractical. A room was built on the East wing of the second floor that had no doors, a room that could never be entered once the walls were completed. Multiple hallways featured doors that opened to solid wall. The West wing of the first floor had a spiral staircase that led to nowhere. Some of the designers and architects working with Kolomann objected at such impractical constructions. Their criticism infuriated Kolomann, who responded that the doors to nowhere and the impenetrable room had a definite and clear purpose; ornamentation. He sacked the dissenters, and the rest of his workshop kept their objections silent, while they whispered to one another that the project was driving a wedge between Kolomann and his sanity. Kolomann had launched himself wholly into the project, and it was impossible for him to remember that it had begun as a practical joke. He convinced himself that the Schloss Brunn was to be the defining creation of his career and the Zeitgerecht movement he represented. His very own magnum opus. His characteristic three piece suits were noticeably looser, and sleep bags had become permanent fixtures of his face. Every minute of his time, and as much time as he

could squeeze out of his fellow artists and designers, was spent on the homes planning and construction. Not only did the Vienna Workshop cancel all of its standing orders when it adopted the Schloss Brunn project, it also no longer took commissions, private or public. At this point Oskar paid for all of the Workshops salaries and expenses, almost owning it. Maria disliked Kolomann, who she viewed as a man taking advantage of her husbands desire for art by pinching every last Kronen from his pocket. Oskar always brushed off his wifes comments. He could not be happier. The prize that he had wanted all of his life was being built before his eyes, growing more real every day. In refined cafes, wine bars, and opera houses he heard chatter complaining that all of the great artists were gone from Vienna, whisked away to work on an unbelievable mansion in the country. After six years of planning, preparation, and construction the Schloss Brunn was completed in the autumn of 1909. To flaunt the palace Oskar threw a grand ball at the residence. The invitations, the most precious and coveted objects in Vienna that winter, even included details on how the guests should dress, lest they disturb the estates artistic harmony. The ball had more attendants than the opening of the Vienna Burgtheater in 1888. Even the Imperial family was represented, by the Emperors nephew Franz Ferdinand. The ball, and the palace that accompanied it, were the focus of Viennas press for the next month. Journalists scrambled for interviews with Kolomann and his artists. Art critics hailed it as the triumph of the modern movement that had started in Vienna. Politicians said that it was a testament to the modernity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, evidence that it was on its way to becoming the most advanced and enlightened society in Europe. The gossip pages were filled with the angry letters of those guests that had been turned away from the ball, at the door or

inside, for not being in accordance with the artistic harmony. Oskar spent his days poring over the papers with a fat cigar, basking in his triumph. His dreams had come true while the Danube ran green with Viennas envy. The Schloss Brunn was an unquestionable victory. By this time the family had been comfortably moved in. Now that she could see the finished product, Maria was in love with the home. Their children, the lovely sixteen year old Hilde, ten year old Manfred, and six year old August enjoyed their wondrous new environment, even if they scarcely understood its purpose or principles. In the first few months the family spent almost every day entertaining some sort of important guests, invariably dignitaries, industrialists or minor royalty, that had arrived to wonder at the fantastic palace that they had heard rumors of. The amount of visitors gradually fizzled out, and normal life began at the Schloss Brunn. One day that winter Maria announced to her husband that as much as she loved the beauty of the new home, she needed a trip into the city to refresh herself, to better appreciate the beauty of the house. Oskar agreed, and Maria took a brief holiday in Vienna. She strolled the narrow, cobble stone streets of her hometown and allowed herself to be lost in its Baroque churches and Gothic passage ways. She realized that she missed her city, she missed its history and charm in comparison to the thoroughly modern Schloss Brunn, which suddenly felt so cold and empty to her. In the Stephenplatz she met a young oil painter who was painting St. Stephens Cathedral in every season. She decided to buy the painting of it in winter, its aggressively vertical towers gently capped by snow. She thought that it would look lovely hanging in the second floor drawing room, over the mantle.

The following week Kolomann paid an unexpected visit to the Brunns. Maria and Oskar received their guest in the drawing room, over sugared pirouline wafers and coffee. In the midst of a mostly frivolous conversation, what had been an animated and cheery Kolomann suddenly fell silent. Fearing that he was somehow offended by the conversation, Maria asked the architect what was wrong. Kolomann, seated opposite of the mantle, merely pointed in front of him. What is it?, Kolomann asked with complete coolness, an icy lack of emotion that made Maria shiver. Why its an oil painting of St. Stephens, said Maria suppressing a nervous laugh, I bought it last week from an artist in the city. Why is it here?, Kolomann responded, in the same detached, neutral tone. Maria looked towards her husband, back at the painting, and lastly to Kolomann, all while unsuccessfully thinking of something of to say. An uncomfortable silence fell over the drawing room, like storm clouds over a pleasant summer afternoon, broken when Kolomann asked Oskar if he could have a word with him in another room. The two gentlemen entered the next room, a parlor which contained no furniture and was bare except for sixteen abstract onyx sculptures arranged in recesses along the walls. Kolomann told Oskar that he was too much of a gentlemen to reprimand another mans wife. But, he told Oskar with the utmost importance, you must immediately discard the painting that she has brought into the home. Oskar admitted that he was not particularly fond of the picture himself, but it was something that pleased his wife and he did not want to upset her. With this remark Kolomann sighed, ran his hands through his great cumulus cloud of hair, and silently examined the sculptures. At last he drew himself closer to Oskar and placed his hands on the other mans shoulders, as if he were about to speak some grave secret that had been drawn out of him only because of an extreme situation.

Oskar, we spoke of this in detail before I committed myself and my work to your home. Gesamtkunstwerk, gesamtkunstwerk, you remember? Everything in this house, from the foundation to the ash trays in the drawing room, to these sculptures and your very lifestyle, they are one! The total, whole existence of art that I have spent my entire life searching for! Art is life and life is art, Oskar. I was the creator of this world, and now you must be its steward. If the gesamtkunstwerk is in any way violated the house is no longer art, is it rubbish! It is no longer superior! Oskar had been staring at his architect like he was man without sanity, which was partially true, but at that word superior a series of chemical reactions in Oskars brain completely changed his thoughts. Superior. That is what he was right now, with this perfect palace. The place that so successfully communicated his worthiness, and the unworthiness of the others. Kolomanns words sunk their teeth into him, and he was filled with terror. He imagined the walls collapsing around him, and all of Vienna laughing at the sad little man in the ruins. Now he understood Kolomann. Gesamtkunstwerk must be protected at all costs. The gentlemen reappeared in the drawing room, where Maria nervously sipped lukewarm coffee from a cup that Kolomann had inspected and approved months earlier. Without a word, Oskar crossed the room, lifted the oil painting from the wall, and tucked it under his arm. His wife walked behind him, more entranced than angry or fearful, through the music room, the billiards room, the guest dining room, and the childrens study to the front door, which Oskar casually opened to throw the oil painting outside. Kolomann, nibbling on wafers by himself in the drawing room, had no way of realizing the mechanisms that he had just put to work in Oskars mind, and the consequences that would follow.

As Maria looked at the rubble of her oil cathedral on the street, Oskar informed her of the first new rule of their household. No new things, just as Kolomann says. But no new art?, Maria spoke, nervously wringing her small, delicate hands, the hands of a porcelain doll. We are living in the highest achievement of art, my dear, and any other art - new or old - would do nothing but tarnish its perfection, her husband replied. Maria did not now how to respond. In all of their years of marriage, he had always treated her and the children so gently. True, he had been a workaholic and scarcely had time for them, but when he did he was always the doting father and respectful husband that her own father had so admired. This was such odd behavior for Oskar. Maria thought that perhaps he had heard news of bad business of some sort, and the stress had fractured her husbands manner. She allowed Oskar to take her arm and lead her, perhaps a bit forcefully, back into the drawing room where they sat with Kolomann for a long time, in almost complete silence. After the painting incident, life continued for the Brunn family normally, or as normal as a family living in such a residence could manage. Maria complained to her husband that she was often awoken by the noise of the peacocks in the indoor gardens, whose cries would travel across the house like shrieks from a distant dungeon. Naturally, Oskar explained that they were vital to the ornamentation, and their removal would compromise the entire home. Little August, and sometimes Manfred and Hilde, would become lost in the maze of rooms and hallways. The family appointed special servants to accompany August everywhere he went, and search for him on the occasions where he still went missing. One evening Hilde was unusually late for dinner. When she arrived to the table, the young lady was in a beautiful red evening gown that her mother had ordered for her, from a new

Parisian designer who was setting the trends in the West. She excused herself by saying that she couldnt help but admire her reflection in the dressing room mirror. Her mother, content with her daughters delight in her gift, excused her. But Oskar, the unquestionable authority at that enormous dinner table, was silent. As the silence grew more oppressive over the meal, and the servants tasked with bringing out the hors doeuvres carefully crept back into the kitchen, Hilde spoke up. Daddy, dont you like it? Oskar let several seconds pass, aware of the oppression each moment inflicted on his daughter. At last he spoke, uttering the simple statement that would would come to ring in the ears of his family. It doesnt match, my dear. The next day Kolomann arrived with a group of his designers to inspect every article of clothing in the house, at the request of Oskar. They spent two full days sorting through every dresser and closet, closely evaluating each dinner jacket and night dress, every tie clasp and bracelet. A certain pair of Hildes earrings perplexed Kolomann, and he spent four whole hours taking them through a variety of rooms and meditating on their meaning before he ultimately found them incompatible with the gesamtkunstwerk. While their wardrobes were at the mercy of Kolomann and his designers, Oskar brought his family to the Vienna Workshops garment division to have all of them outfitted anew. Kolomann had designed new outfits for each family member, to correspond to certain rooms. There was a smoking jacket for Oskar that would look absolutely splendid in the billiards room, and ties and kerchiefs colored and patterned to match certain plants in the garden. Many of the dresses for the ladies of the house were exclusively of black, white, and gold, to match the dominant scheme of the interior. Whether they liked the new clothing or not was inconsequential.

Maria was furious with Oskar. He managed to calm her down by saying that the old clothing could no longer be worn in the house, but her and Hilde could still wear the Parisian fashions they each loved so much on outings. Still unhappy but no longer volatile, Maria agreed and went to bed with Oskar. But that night, Oskar awoke in a cold sweat. All that he could think about were the Parisian dresses that hung in Hilde and Marias closets. Their bold, violent colors, the strange cuts and flairs that fit with nothing in his environment. He felt the dresses eating away at his home from within, like enormous rats chewing through the floorboards. A cancer in his home. He rose from his bed, gathered his wifes dresses and then Hildes from each of the rooms while the women looked at the patriarch with unbelief. The womens shrill voices of complaint fell upon deaf ears. The next morning servants arrived to find several years of European high fashion strewn across the yard. Maria did not forgive Oskar in the morning. After that night she moved herself into one of the many guest bedrooms in the home. Still, she obeyed her husband and wore only the clothing that the Workshop had made for her. Many of the outfits were designed with certain rooms in mind, and they were sometimes required to change their outfits to enter different areas of the mansion. A silence began to descend over the household that slowly grew ever day, as if its residents were slowly growing mute. Kolomann was now visiting the house on a near daily basis. Oskar would send a coach for him each time an item was misplaced, or if any piece of furnishing was feared to be misaligned. Once Oskar was entertaining a business partner in the smoking room. When they moved to the billiards room, cigars still alight, the gentleman made the mistake of picking up his ashtray and taking it with him into the next room. Kolomann had to spend the better part of four

days going through volumes of blue prints, plans, and notes, to rediscover the exact positioning of the ashtray. All of the while Oskar was inconsolable, pacing through the cavernous halls like a man lost in a thick, dark dream. Oskar threw his estranged wife a lavish celebration for her 34th birthday in the fall of 1912, three years into their life at the Schloss Brunn. By this point Oskar had found a solution to guests entering his home wearing apparel that upset the homes harmony. He kept several extra closets filled with clothing designed by the Workshop in a broad range of sizes, and asked perplexed visitors to change into new clothes in a dressing room connected to the foyer, so they would not upset the homes unity. For his wifes birthday party he had all guests sent to the Workshop prior to attendance to be outfitted at his expense. A small army of servants patrolled every room in the house, ensuring that none of the guests moved any furniture or decorations. Several irritated ladies in the dessert room commented to one another that they felt as if they were in a museum rather than a home. A young man sipping schnapps in the corner responded that it seemed more like a tomb. Many other attendees were annoyed that they had to wear a uniform from the workshop, unable to flaunt the latest fashions or most precious jewelry that they had attained. Oskar had servants handle all of the gifts, which filled six full rooms on the first floor. After a long night of dancing and drink, Maria awoke and walked downstairs to inspect her treasure trove of presents. She found that a team of Workshop employees, supervised by Kolomann, were already at work unwrapping her gifts and inspecting them for how they would match with the gesamtkunstwerk. There was a heap in the corner of the room, where splendid dish sets from China, jade vases from Japan, diamond brooches from Amsterdam, wondrous

sculptures from India, ornate eggs from Russia, golden candelabras from London, impressionist paintings from Paris and a host of other treasures had been dumped atop each other like a stack of rubbish. She had only to look at Kolomann, munching on a large hunk pulled from last nights cake, to hear those dreaded words she hated so. It doesnt match, my dear. As adrift as Oskar had become in his own world, he realized that he was coming close to losing his wife. In an attempt to placate her, he sent her away with her girlfriends to Vienna, Berlin and Prague, with generous sums of cash. These trips only served to depress her more. In those cities she saw the latest in fashion, art, and decoration, but unlike her friends, she was unable to buy any of it and incorporate it in her own home. In these cities she noticed that Kolomanns Zeitgerecht style was no longer in fashion, and popular taste had been awarded to newer movements and designers. But for Maria, life, fashion, and art had all stopped. She could never have anything new. She was locked in the static world of the Schloss Brunn. She was nothing more than a gallery attendant in her own home. It was true that Kolomann and his contemporaries were no longer in vogue among Viennas elite. As they had spent all of their energy during those six years designing and working on the Schloss Brunn without taking any commissions in the city, the wealthy had to look for new artist to patronize. Those artists had inherited the chic reputation once afforded to the Vienna Workshop. With Kolomanns demands that they devote all their time to the Schloss Brunns design and construction, the artists that comprised the Vienna Workshop had not performed a single exhibition in all that time. They were throughly forgotten by the public. Those who had once been their patrons looked upon their work as something to brush off as a passing fashion.

That was precisely the reason why Kolomann allowed himself to be called to the Schloss Brunn at Oskars every whim. The Workshop had not received a new commission for almost half a year, and would be long bankrupt if not for the near daily work provided by Oskars obsession. During the winter of 1913 the silence in the home increased, a fog that had spread to every room. The Brunns wandered the palatial home in solitude, lost in a shared dream, doomed to wander forever without finding one another. Hilde was now nineteen, and one of the greatest beauties of the Empire. She received many suitors in the home she hated, wearing the despised clothes that her father and Kolomann had picked out for her. Oskar required her not only to to be accompanied by a chaperone while in the presence of a young gentleman, but also by a group of Workshop designers who watched the young mans every move and took down pages of notes on the confused suitor. Oskar quietly grew resentful of his family. How could they show such ingratitude when he had built the greatest piece of art in Europe to house them in? He watched them at the insufferable silence of the table, over cold schnitzel. They had the right clothes, but in all of their faces he saw deep flaws, flaws that he could hardly believe he had been ignorant of for all those years. How much thinner Marias upper lip was in comparison to the lower one. The slight, but noticeable extra length of Hildes left ring finger. The strange way in which Manfred moved, his right arm never seemed in total harmony with the left, no matter what action or unmoving stance he was in. The space between young Augusts eyes, on very close examination, seemed improperly proportioned. Later that February Oskar announced to his staff that his family were to be served individual meals in their respective rooms, while he occupied the dining room alone. Seated at

the end of an empty 26 seat table, absently poking at a roasted quail, Oskar digested the thought that he had chewed the entire previous month; his family did not fit into the gesamtkunstwerk. That is the only thing that could explain their rejection of this environment. The Schloss Brunn had already rejected them, for disturbing its harmony. They had become to him decorations rather than human beings. Oskar began experimenting with different women to see if he could find a female compatible with the Schloss Brunns art. While Maria was sent off on holiday to various European capitals, and the children to Vienna with chaperones, Oskar conducted his affairs. Kolomann would inspect the poshest of Viennas brothels for candidates, and bring them back to the Schloss Brunn in coaches. Among the gossip circles of Viennese call girls, traditionally the keepers of wealthy gentlemens greatest secrets, were stories of the strange man and his stranger house in the country who made love to the girls in strange rooms, sometimes while an albino man watched on silently. Like all gossip, the gossip of Viennas comfort women eventually swims to greater streams. Maria learned of one of the many affairs that Oskar was conducting, and on June 27th, 1914 she collected the children and left the home where life had stopped for all of them. As she stormed out of the mansion she shouted at Oskar that he was a dead man, that his life had ended the day the final stone was laid down in the Schloss Brunn. From the magnificent bay window in the master bedroom Oskar watched his family depart in a coach, in the same way a man might watch a deer wander onto his property and slowly return to the wilderness. The next day Oskar awoke to the news that the most fashionable guest he had ever hosted, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Serbia. In the following weeks Oskar

was greeted each morning by newspapers stuffed and spilling with alliances, war declarations, and invasions. Outside, Europe shifted into a volatile landscape of war as its empires melted around each other. But life in the Schloss Brunn continued as normal, as it had every day since 1909. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire slowly died over the course of the war, its most celebrated work of architecture and modernity was largely forgotten. The artistic movements and its excessive patrons of the last decade seemed trivial and petty in comparison to the war. What were ornament and decoration next to Maxim guns and 38 mm howitzers? Soldiers marching out of Vienna, passing by the Schloss Brunn on their way to Serbia, shook their heads at such an absurd symbol of excess, a remnant of the past that had promised a future they would never see. In 1916 Kolomann finally closed the Vienna Workshop. The Emperor had decided that its artists and designers would be of better use to the Empire in trenches than in studios. Only Kolomann remained, who resided in a country estate near the Schloss Brunn purchased by Oskar so that his architect would never be out of reach. Oskar was relying on him more than he ever had before, consulting with Kolomann on decisions ranging from what foot he should step with first when entering the garden, to what the ideal temperature of his bath should be. He demanded that Kolomann be present at his bedside in the morning, to ensure that the manner in which Oskar left his bed would not be discordant. Oskars ability to make decisions slowly eroded each day, as if he was being slowly consumed by the home. With no one and nothing else to turn to, Oskar saw himself as a person second and a piece of ornament that needed to be perfected first.

The war, growing darker for Austria-Hungary each day, even poisoned the seemingly inexhaustible Brunn fortune. The trading business had been severely disrupted by warfare, on land and sea. The arms manufacturing business that had once belonged to Marias father had received an enormous amount of orders at the beginning of the war but had lost almost all of its business to other manufacturers once its weapons were found to be defective and inferior in the field. Oskar, lost amid the Schloss Brunn, found himself unable to devote time and interest to business, and soon found himself deep in debt as his homes expenses only increased. Following their separation, Oskar had agreed to put Maria and the children into a posh Vienna apartment and provide a generous alimony each month. In 1917 the alimony abruptly stopped. Maria and an attorney wrote Oskar numerous letters, but without any indication of a response Maria was forced to seek her husband in her old home. At the door of the Schloss Brunn she was told by a servant that had been employed there since 1909 and clearly recognized her that Oskar Brunn has no wife, and no children. At the end of the war Oksar sold the remnant of his trading empire at a loss, in order to keep his home in order. The sound system in the music room had been malfunctioning, flora that had withered in the gardens needed to be replaced, pipes had frozen in winter, the smoking room needed a new coat of paint, the orb of iron laurel leaves crowing the palace was rusting in places and needed new gold leaf. As the debt increased Oskar gradually let more and more of his extensive serving staff go, increasing his isolation. By 1921 the only sounds in the home were Oskars footsteps. The last of the servants had been dismissed, and he had not hosted a guest other than Kolomann for almost a year. He had not left his home for almost two years. News had reached him only through the conversations of the

final few servants, the news that the Empire was no more, that a Republic was being formed, that there were mobs and riots in the streets. None of this mattered to Oskar. The world outside was as ugly and uncontrollable as it had ever been, but in the Schloss Brunn he had a way of life that was still beautiful, that had never changed, and he would never allow it to change. He lived alone, and needed no one. Because he could no longer pay the electric bills he closed all of the blinds in daytime so that the day matched the night. He wandered the dark halls, magnificent rooms which he could not even see. Kolomann, who left his patron behind to come to America in 1925, said that he would arrive in the lightless mansion to hear the sound of Oskars voice coming from across dark chasms and shapeless rooms, talking to unseen servants and guests about the artistic brilliance of the residence. * On the 1st of April, 1945, a scouting party attached to the Soviet 98th Guards Rifle Division discovered a strange structure in a meadow close to Vienna. The old Imperial city was one of the last bastions of the Third Reich and the target of the Soviet offensive. The small party of soldiers, all of whose names have been lost to the Eastern front, carefully watched it for any sign of German activity. It was an immense structure of black marble, that looked like it might have been built to withstand bombing. Although it was in disrepair, they could tell that there was ornate decoration, including a strange globe of laurel leaves, that seemed too impractical for a fortress or bunker. After surveying the structure for enough cautious time, they decided make their approach. It was surrounded by a field of tall, unkept grass and bushes that would provide solid cover in case of a firefight. The soldiers reached the front gate, an immense door of rotting wood that

stood three times as high as the tallest soldier in the group. The buildings many windows were covered with black blinds. Wild ivy had begun to make its way up some of the walls, and the iron balconies and details gilded in gold were badly rusting. Despite its decomposition, the front door defended its home to the last and was only broken down after a furious barrage of rifle butts. Marching through the splinters, they entered a world of near complete darkness, filled with the stench of three stale decades. It seemed impossible that any human beings could be living inside, much less a German garrison. The officer among the men lead the way with his flashlight. As they made their way into the darkness the soldiers tugged on the blinds to allow more light in. The inside was silent, except for the occasional sounds of small, scurrying feet. It was at the base of a grand staircase that the men made their first strange discovery; a skeleton of some sort of animal lay before its first step, which none of the men could identify. Later, when the rest of the battalion arrived at the strange building, a Captain who had once studied zoology in Moscow identified it as the remains of a Peacock. In the coming week the entire battalion was assigned with exploring the labyrinth, to look for any clues that might explain its purpose or history, while the officers set up headquarters in the old dining room. Despite the building's state of abandon, everything within the home seemed to be in perfect order, aside from the occasional piece of furniture that had become a home for rats. As there was nothing in the building that was produced after the Great War, some of the Russians speculated that the building may have been abandoned for thirty years. The only items that hinted towards any kind of meaning were pieces of note paper found scattered in every room, although the mystery they created seemed to far outweigh any meaning

that could have been provided. Strewn across the floor, the papers were all written to someone named Oktav Kolomann, and signed by Oskar. In each page this Oskar described in painstaking detail where in the room he was standing or sitting, and how Kolomann felt about each of these positions in regard to ornament. Oskar wrote excitedly, and noted in several papers that he felt he was coming close to finding the spot where he would complete the decoration. After a a week of thorough room to room examinations, including a vast indoor garden whose flora had long perished, an occupant was located in a small drawing room on the fourth floor. This occupant, who the Russians believed to be Oskar, the writer of the notes, was sitting in a white leather armchair in an advanced state of decomposition. After an examination a Russian medic found that the man had died of starvation. A final note was found on the end table next to the arm chair. Great news, Kolomann. After years of wandering I feel like I have finally found it, the exact location where I will best serve the ornamentation. Do I now compliment the gesamtkunstwerk perfectly? If not, please write me. Until then, I shall remain in this precise spot. I match the chair perfectly.

In The Palace of The Doges Each day I awake in the Palace of the Doges of Venice. Today there are no Doges, there are no Venetians. There is me. I sleep in the great council room on a mattress that I found on the pavement of the Calle del Paradiso, thrown from a window. It was bloodied, but I washed it off. It was worth keeping; memory foam. The foam knows every shape and line of my body. It must also know all my secrets and terrors and lusts, absorbing my dreams each night, mopping them up like bread over thick oil. The Palace has changed very little in the 19 months since I have claimed it as my own. The only difference to the council room is the bare, yellowing mattress that rests on the center of its oak floor, surrounded by the empty seats of dead councils, and the gaudy paintings of dead artists that have hung for centuries. There was very little furniture of any kind inside the Palace. I made use of the velvet ropes that once herded tourists, repositioning them as obstacles in the map room, as if their fall could serve as a final warning if it come for me. The first image that greets me each morning is Paradise by Tinotretto. the largest wall painting in the dead continent. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of angels forming circular rows, looking up at the Holy Trinity, moving in to behold Christ. I allow myself to look idly upon the image of salvation, and then begin my morning routine. When I rise from the mattress, I tiptoe across the wooden floor, making sure to avoid any creaks until I know that my security has not been compromised. There are tall wooden doors at each end of the room, flanked by the stiff, wooden chairs of the Doge and his council. The doors are framed by thick marble.

I walk as softly as I can the to door on the left of Christ. I press a single ear against the lacquered oak. When my electric watch still worked, I precisely measured out the time spent at each door. Two and a half minutes of listening. The watch has been inactive for months, but I have performed the morning ritual so many times that my body is attuned to listen for 150 seconds. I hear nothing. I listen for distinct noises - a low, predatory, growl, the slap of scales slithering on cobblestone, inhuman and indecipherable laughter. The fear begins in my stomach, curdling like a rotten meal, and soon spreads across my body. But I have never heard these things. Since the end of the pandemic I have not heard any sound in this city that was not caused by me. But each morning, without fail, my idle mind fills with the terror that the faint, far away growl, the slither, or the laughter will suddenly turn into a noise so loud that it shakes the door as it accelerates at an impossible speed through the front of the palace, up the golden stairs, through the audience chambers, the royal apartments, the map room, into the council room, into my flesh and into my mind. But it does not. Each door confirms my safety. Why do I spend my moments in such terror, living like cowering prey, in an empty place? So long ago, before the sickness that only I had the fortune or curse to withstand emptied the city, a friend told me this; no one is afraid of an empty building. People are afraid of empty buildings because there is no such thing as an empty building. A building only has the false appearance of being empty because something is hiding itself from you.

This statement has cursed me. Each day I would wander the silent labyrinth of Venice in the daylight hours, picking through crumbling trattorias for whatever food has not spoiled, searching churches for candles that were not burned out for desperate prayers during the sickness. As I searched for provisions I tried to fight the thought, but the thought had furrowed through the soil of my mind; there is no such thing as an empty city. Something was in the back of the trattorias meat freezer, thrashing in its chains. Something hissed in the sacristy of the church. A predator waiting at the end of every alley, a hidden eye watching from every broken window. There can be no labyrinth without a minotaur. I sought refuge in the Palace, hoping that it would shield me from the labyrinthine Venice outside. The Palace was both a source of terror and mystery for me in the early days. In the daytime I strolled through its corridors and state rooms in awe. But at night the Palace was transformed into a series of long hallways and corners, doors that hid my darkest fears, a maze in which I was nothing more than a rat. It was those nights that I would curse myself for such gaudiness, living in this maze of a palace when I could have holed himself up in any one room studio, all of my weapons and provisions in sight, one place of entry. I tell myself that I have heard and seen nothing. I have no need for the weapons I have collected, the weapons that I do not know how to use. I tell myself that I should not be afraid to go outside, that I cannot remember my last meal and I starve in the Palace. I cannot fear the it I have created, the minotaur I have placed into my own maze. These thoughts were preferable to the one that brew in my mind like a sickness, that has become just as believable as my optimistic rational. Ever more likely. The idea that whatever is out there, hiding from me, enters the Palace each night, into the courtyard, up the golden

staircase, through the audience chambers, royal apartments, map room, through the very door of the council room. That it enters the room and stands as still as a statue, its gaze fixed on my body as I sleep on the stained mattress. That it stands there, doing nothing but breathing, until it silently returns to the dark corners where it waits for me. When ever I awake, I break into a cold sweat, certain it was watching me, and for this reason I sleep facedown and make sure to shut my eyes as tight as I can against the mattress each time I emerge from sleep. For that is what I fear most. More than death or destruction at its hands. I fear that the night It finally comes for me, It will not grant me release from the fear I have created. It will simply watch me.

Very good. Ambiguous but still captivating. Only suggestion would be to expand on the minotaur reference. Make it scarier.

Sweet The cream leaves the nozzle in an instant hush, a sound so fragile and beautiful that unless you concentrate on it with all of your might it may have never happened. The whipped white wonder emerges slowly, a lazy descent of sugared cirrus onto the outspread palm, or perhaps finger. Or even better, directly into the mouth. Like a suckle from the sweetest breast. A nipple of the Golden Calf. Milk and honey. This is the thought that germinated in the head of Lloyd Archwood as he pushed the walk button on the corner of Madison and 88th. Its stem broke through the soil of his brain as he put his shining wingtips on the street. It blossomed as he reached the middle of the crosswalk. By the time he was on Madison Avenue, it was feeding the bees, pollinating his nervous system, seeding his bloodstream. Cream. Whipped cream. The kind that he used to sneak from the fridge in the linoleum land of his youth. Tiptoeing down the stairs, hush hush so mother wont hear, swing wide open the door and amongst the pickles and the mustards it stood, aluminum purity. He thought of his finger, how he would leave it in his mouth as he walked up the stairs, savoring every last part of the sweetness. Lloyd had stopped walking. He removed a black leather glove and ran it through his $90 haircut. For he realized that he had never been more alive than in those nocturnal moments, sneaking whipped cream in the night. His acceptance to Cornell, moving on top of Evelyn during their wedding night, landing his first big account. None of those moments, those things he thought of as life, could hold a candle to the clandestine pinch of the nozzle at midnight. Sweet.

Lloyd noticed that he had stopped in front of a Seven Eleven. He stepped inside of it, nodding a cordial good day to the dull Indian man poring over a the paper, who failed to return Lloyds charming greeting. Lloyd made his way straight to the back, to the cooler. He saw in front of him, a cylinder of Reddi Whip. Lloyd paid at the counter, and promptly left. In the street Lloyd wasted no time in breaking the seal, twisting the cap, and shaking the can. He slowly squeezed a creamy dollop onto his gloved finger. He licked the black leather topped with sugar. It was sweet. But it was not the feeling. No, it really had not come close. For a moment Lloyd felt a grave panic; that feeling of total sweetness, bliss as a child, was it forever gone? Had he been the given the grace to remember a fragment of a buried dream, a dream that would never be regained? Lloyd calmed down as he remembered the vital ingredient. Mother. Mother doesn't want me sneaking down at night, being a bad boy, eating right from the can like a little Indian. Mother was gone. It was the danger that Lloyd needed, the sense of adventure, risk and reward. That beautiful rush, ending in sweetness. Lloyd was inside of Pierce & Anderson, sitting at his desk. He hid the can of whipped cream in the bottom drawer in his mahogany desk. He had calculated his reaction time and risks to the smallest detail. It was to be simple. He would buzz for Kirsten to come in, to give him the details of the lunch meeting one more time. He estimated that it would take Kirsten a good nine seconds to rise from her chair, in her lady like fashion, making sure to mend creases in her skirt before she stood fully, and walk through the door into his office. In that brief window, Lloyd would swing open the bottom drawer, withdraw the can, squeeze onto the tip of his finger, drop it

back down, slam the drawer, and spin the chair around to give himself extra time to suck the cream off his finger if Kirsten was being speedy. As he moved his shaking finger to the intercom button, Lloyd realized that he was experiencing a feeling of excitement that he had not felt for his entire adult life. His heart beat in his chest, a bead of sweat fell from his brow. He pushed the button. -Kirsten, Id like to see you in my office please. -Be right in, Mr. Archwood. Before that tinny sing song voice came from the speaker, Lloyd forced open the bottom drawer with such speed that it was pulled off of its track. He sprayed the cream above his right index finger, spreading it to the underside of his knuckle. As he tried to slam the broken drawer back into place he heard the clicking of heels outside of his office door. He swung the chair around, his back to the door, as he took his whole finger in his mouth and sucked on the cream. Knob twisting, hinge clicking, door opening. - Yes Mr. Archwood? Lloyd swung his chair around to see Kirsten standing to attention, her blouse cut slightly lower than average. He rubbed his chin with his right index finger, as if he had to engage it in some other physical activity to cover up his crime. This finger? Never! Kirsten began to give him the details of todays business lunch, the street of the steakhouse and the correct pronunciation of the Portuguese mans name, but Lloyd paid little attention, he knew these details. The experiment had been a modest success. The manner in which a risk added to the expectation, danger, and reward of the situation had soothed his urge, if not entirely satisfied it. He let Kirsten carry on, chatter meaninglessly.

Before the monthly account meeting in the office that day, Lloyd transported the can of Reddi Whip to the mens restroom by hiding it within his suit coat. He stood on the toilet and raised the drop ceiling with his fingers, and stashed the can in a corner above the ceiling. During the meeting, he twice excused himself to make his way to the mens room to suck from the can hidden in the ceiling. He kept the can of Reddi Whip above the drop ceiling for the entire week, regularly returning to the stall to taste in secret. Lloyd had a clear image of how he would look to a discoverer, a distinguished young account man with his head above a stall, squeezing whipped cream into his mouth. On one occasion he had his hand in the ceiling when he heard the door begin to swing open. He pulled the can down and threw himself onto the seat, heart pounding. Giddy with excitement, Lloyd tip-tapped on the floor with his shoes as he sprayed the last of the whipped cream. He had to do his best to stifle a laugh, the laugh of a child. The can of Reddi Whip was empty. Lloyd waited until he heard flushing, water faucets, the swing of the door. He took the can and placed it in the middle of the tile floor before leaving the restroom, a sudden impulse. Lloyd left the office with with a strange, giddy, satisfaction, imagining the confusion of whoever it was that would find an empty can of Reddi Whip in the middle of the bathroom. As he walked home, an extra swing in his stride, he noticed the Seven Eleven where he had bought the Reddi Whip the week before. With his supply depleted, he decided to replenish his stores. The dull Indian man was in the same position behind the register, possibly reading the same edition of the paper, still not returning greetings. Lloyd approached the Dairy refrigerator, eyeing the different brands. This time he took a can of Cool Whip. He reached in his back pocket

for his change from lunch, but stopped mid reach. He looked behind him. Indian man still reading the paper. He looked back at the Cool Whip. One more time at the owner. In one smooth move, the seal was broken, top removed, can shaken and squeezed into a fat dollop onto his glove. Lloyd ate hungrily out of his glove, like a starving pigeon. His heart pounded. A backward glance revealed no signs of surveillance or suspicion from the owner. An awesome wave of relief and satisfaction spread over Lloyd. He put the can back in the refrigerator, and noticed whipped cream on his chin in the reflection. He wiped his chin, licked his lips and exited the store quickly. Back on the street, Lloyd struggled to contain his excitement. He drummed his fingers against his legs, bobbed his head and beamed a smile from ear to ear. He realized that he might look like a a lunatic in an Zegna suit to the passerby, and struggled to relax and compose himself. Over dinner that night, Evelyn questioned why Lloyd was so happy. Lloyd shrugged the first time, and made up a story about attracting a big account upon further questioning. She asked him to stop shaking his leg under the table. The next day at work, Lloyd eagerly awaited to hear someone mention a can of whipped cream. It was the strangest thing Paulson! Someone just left in the middle of the floor! To his disappointment, he never overhead a single mention. As he left the office, he paused at Kirstens desk. Kirsten, did you hear anyone around the office talk about a can of whipped cream? Uh, Kirsten fumbled, finding herself unable to answer a question unrelated to incoming calls and lunch arrangements. No Mr. Archwood, I dont believe I have. Alright. Have a nice evening.

You too Mr. Archwood, Kirsten said, smiling girlishly. Lloyd walked to Seven Eleven after work, repeating his acts of the previous day. He encountered three more bodegas on his walk home, and for a moment questioned if they existed the week before. He went into each of these and siphoned whipped cream behind the owners back. Each time he glanced at the owner less, sprayed whipped cream more. Took more of a risk, felt a better high. An irritated Evelyn questioned his lateness, which he explained with an imaginary accounts meeting. She reprimanded him for tapping his fingers against the table at dinner. That night Lloyd dreamt the same dream he had been blessed with each night since buying the first can of Reddi Whip. Tiptoeing down the stairs, crossing the linoleum. Reaching inside of the box of light for the forbidden prize. Fearing the discoverer, Mother. Impossibly huge in her nightgown, billowing like the sails of a Spanish Galleon. Mother, the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Lloyd picked at his dragon roll distractedly. Mr. Archwood, Im so glad that we finally get to see each other out of the office! Kirsten said too loudly, wearing too much make up, through a mouth framed by lipstick that was far too red for her complexion. She went on about how she always knew that they had so much in common, her words slightly slurred from Sake. Lloyd barely listened, and instead glanced at the door in the fear that someone in the new party would recognize him. He had carefully selected this sushi bar for its proximity to no one that he knew or worked with. Thats wonderful Kirsten, he said, still eyeing the door.

It had started with a secondhand worry in the back of his mind, and evolved into a panic. The rushes had stopped coming to Lloyd. He had started to shoplift, stuffing cans of Reddi Whip into his satchel at Seven Eleven. He would quietly leave Evelyns side in the middle of the night, tiptoe down stairs and into the streets where he would eat half a can of Cool Whip in the aisle of Seven Eleven and retreat back upstairs to hold Evelyn in his sticky fingers. However, his actions had less thrill, less reward each time, no matter how much he pushed the risk. He couldnt let that feeling of bliss, remembered nineteen days ago at the corner of 88th and Madison, to slip away from him, back into the forgotten dream of childhood. So he had made his plan. He would try to recreate the perilous whipped cream gauntlet of his childhood. Mother, so large and terrifying to the small boy, was gone forever. Evelyn could never match how she towered over him, intimidated him as a little boy. Minotaur. For how could detection by Evelyn while sneaking Reddi Whip from the fridge even be a risk? She would think it strange and offer some bitchy words, but how could he properly fear her as he crossed the kitchen? Unless there was another risk. That risk was in his home now, had stained his white collar with lipstick in the taxi cab, during a passionless kiss. Lloyd looked at Kirsten and pressed his finger to his lips. It was very late. My wife is not here, Lloyd lied, but I want you to be as quiet as can be. Its romantic. Kirsten nodded. Kirsten, I want you to undress. Stay in the living room, Ill come back for you, Lloyd said. Lloyd had no desire for Kirsten, no impulse to watch her take of her dress. He concentrated on the excitement building in his chest, the giddy feeling rising in his stomach like flood water.

He tiptoed to the top of the steps. He looked back to the landing and went down the stairs again, as light as if he were a six year old boy. He entered the kitchen. Everything in the room seemed much bigger to him, as if it had grown. He gingerly walked to the refrigerator, standing on his tip toes to pull open the door, open the box of light. He looked between the pickles and the mustard. He pulled out the beautiful, perfect, cylinder. As he broke the seal, he heard voices in the other room. The voices of two women, rising, angry. Shouting. He heard his own name. It was Kirsten and Evelyn. No, it was one voice. Mother. Minotaur. He twisted off the cap. Lloyd was oblivious to the shrieks of the women in the next room. He didnt hear Evelyn scream at him. Marriage and professional life were foreign concepts to him. He was just six years old, sneaking whipped cream out of the refrigerator, in bliss among the froth and the foam. Sweet.
Minotaur reference in two consecutive stories? Risky. I'd either use a different example or put this story elsewhere. Very creepy story. Where was the inspiration from? Maybe describe Kristen more in comparison to Evelyn so that the reader knows how insane this guy really is.

Emeraph ! Few people have heard the term emeraph. Less know what it means. No one alive today

can describe it to you. Emeraph has been wholly, unquestionably, and irretrievably lost to history. There are an unnumbered amount of things that have been swallowed by the jaws of history - cities, books, scientific discoveries, languages, gods, kings - but emeraph is something altogether different. Emeraph is more hopelessly lost than those others that we may still receive a glimpse of through artifacts, scraps, or our imagination. There is no solid evidence left to give us an even partial understanding of emeraph, and its very nature makes it impossible to imagine. Emeraph, at some point in time, was a color. The earliest written mention of emeraph comes to us from the written account of Licinus Blaetus, a Roman centurion in the first century before Christ. The account, written on papyrus scrolls, was discovered in excellent condition within a sealed jar that a peasant boy struck with a spade while tilling a field in Umbria, in 1857. Licinus was part of a Roman expeditionary force that set out from Alexandria in 23 B.C. to make contact with civilizations rumored to exist in the lands far south of Egypts borders. Following a long and difficult journey through uncharted lands, Licinius and his surviving men made contact with a friendly nomadic tribe. Their name is not given anywhere in the account, rather Licinius refers to them simply as the Nomads throughout. It is not known whether he was unable to discern their name because of a language barrier, or whether the people had no name for themselves. This has frustrated historians investigating emeraph for centuries. Licinius described the Nomads as a wretched, barbaric people who had no concept of the written word, could barely feed themselves, and covered their sun scorched bodies in filthy

garments of such inferior quality that they began to rot almost as soon as they touched the skin. The people were entranced by the way the sun reflected off of the centurion's iron sword, and they bowed down to him in the sand as if he was some sort of a divine creature. The eldest member of the nomads was a small, wizened, old man who supported himself with crutches made from the long bones of an unknown animal. The Elder led Licinius into the largest tent in the center of the camp, whose entryway was guarded by two large men. As they passed in, one of the guards produced a black cloth that he raised to cover Licinius face, but the Elder gestured at the guard, who dropped the cloth and stared at Licinius with a mixture of envy and confusion. It is in this tent that Licinius sees the thing that makes an otherwise worthless encounter with primitive people the most important moment in his life. In the center of the tent fourteen girls, none of whom had reached puberty, sat motionlessly in a circle. The young girls were all wearing identical, long robes, which covered their entire bodies except for the eyes. Licinius, without success, tried to describe something for us that defied all the efforts of his great civilizations language and written word, something that defied description itself. Licinius tried to describe a color that he had never before seen. Licinius made sure to clarify what he meant by a color that he had never seen. He had not personally seen all colors, he knew that no man ever will, but until that point he felt as if he had. He wrote that while we may never see every shade of red or purple or yellow, we understand how the base colors appear and we can combine them in our imagination with every other color we know to produce any shade we desire. By this knowledge, man inherently knows and is aware of every color in the universe. What Licinius encountered he could never have imagined.

But this color was something that Licinius has absolutely no words for. He cannot illustrate it to us, or even to himself, by describing the shades and pigments of other colors. It is impossible to communicate. Licinius notes that he has spent years looking for a way to let others see what he had seen, but there is not a single word in his tongue or language that can deliver it to us. All he has is a single word, an empty, worthless collection of letters - its name. While in the tent the elder continually gestured at the girls while pulling at his own filthy rags. He kept repeating a sound that Licinius recorded as emeraph. Licinius slowly churned the blocky, uncomfortable letters around his tongue until they became domesticated, meant something. Emeraph was the color of the cloth the girls wore, the unexplainable wonder. Licinius knew then that he must bring a scrap of the cloth back to Rome, as the impossible concept of unknown color can only be explained by the color itself. With difficulty he indicated to the Elder what he wanted, gesturing towards the girls while pulling on his own red tunic, and extended an arm filled with denari towards him. The Elder finally realized what the Roman wanted, but Caesars currency had the same value to these people as grains of sand. Licinius attempted to barter with everything that he and his men possessed. But each time he received the same furious shaking of the head from the Elder, who pointed his shrunken stick of an arm at the girls in the center who remained as silent and oblivious to the Roman as when he first walked in. Licinius almost offered his sword as capital for just a tiny scrap of the emeraphdyed cloth, but he realized that he could not fully trust deals made with these strange people who cannot understand him and so he kept his weapon and formed his own plans.

Licinius emerged from his tent to meet one of his lieutenants, who had good news. A group of Nomad leaders, with some difficulty, communicated to him that the Romans were their welcome guests and that Licinius men may stay under some of the Nomads tents for the night. This was welcome news to the thirty remaining soldiers, who had not slept in any kind of shelter for weeks. That night the Nomads gave the Romans a feast, or at least the closest thing to a feast a tribe of nomads could provide. The soldiers sat around a fire and stuffed themselves with roasted meats spiced by things theyve never tasted, and strange fruits whose seeds appeared on the outside of the skin. While they feasted the Nomads only picked at grains of rice, looking at the Romans. Licinius caught the shrunken Elder, standing on his bone supports, staring at him with a look he found unsettling. After they ate, as the men retired to their shelters, Licinius spoke to his two most trusted men. He had decided that he would take a cloth of emeraph that night by force, and under the cover of darkness. The mens tents were set up a short distance from the main Nomad camp, so with care and stealth they would be able to slip out into the night unnoticed. Stealth was essential, for although the Romans had superior armor and weapons they were weak from the sun and travel, and the Nomads had superior numbers. A pitched battle would be too risky. Thus, Licinius planned to bring just his two best men to the sacred tent, where they would quickly and silently overtake the guards. Licinius would slip inside the tent, cut a piece of cloth from one of the girls robes, and lead the escape from the camp. Darkness fell, the sands grew cold, and the camp settled into silence. Licinius and his two men walked to the tent, sweating hands clamped firmly on the hilts of their blades. They had left their armor in the tent, to make themselves light and avoid catching reflections of moonlight.

Their anxiety and excitement turned to confusion when they found that the entrance to the sacred tent was unguarded. The two guards, who blindfold all those impure enough to witness emeraph before entering, were nowhere to be seen. Licinius wondered if he had led his men to the wrong tent, a good possibility in the near complete darkness of the desert night. The centurion approached the tent and opened the flap to the smallest amount that allowed sight inside. In the middle of the expansive tent sat the fourteen girls around a slowly burning fire, the impossible color of their garments illuminated in the light. Licinius slowly and purposefully approached the girls, trying not to disturb the eerie calm that permanently existed in the tent. As before the girls made no noise, gave no reaction to the strange man as he approached them with his blade drawn. Licinius, sword in hand, knelt next to the first girl that he reached and slowly placed his hand on her robe. He pulled at the fabric remarkably soft and delicate, nothing like the coarse garments worn by the other Nomads - and felt for the end of her robe. He found it and slowly cut a fragment from the bottom, no bigger than the palm of his hand. He would bring this treasure back to Rome, a greater bounty than all the spoils of Carthage or Jerusalem. Licinius heard a scream coming from outside the tent. He shoved the scrap into his robes, and sprinted to the opening of the tent. Both of his men were there, staring as another Roman ran towards them over a sand dune, screaming. Licinius describes how his heart sank into his throat when he realized what the soldier was shouting; Barbari tradidit nobis! - The Barbarians have betrayed us. The three men looked on in horror as a wooden spear burst through the soldiers chest, felling him to the sand with a soft sound.

Licinius realized why the sacred tent was unguarded; the Nomads had collected all of their available men to slaughter their guests while they slept. He recalled the way the Elder stared at him earlier that night, and realized that the Elder must have ordered the deaths of him and his men there at the campfire for being too interested in the sacred tent he had shown him. A group of Nomads appeared on the crest of the dune where the fallen soldier lay, and upon catching sight of the last three Romans, sprinted down the dune with their spears held high. Licinius men meet them like true Romans, striking the first few down easily with their iron blades, but more Nomads were soon upon them. As he watched his men fight to the last, his lieutenant screaming in agony as a spear shredded his shoulder, Licinius turned heel and ran. There was no glory in dying with the last of his men in the sand, he must find a way back to Rome with the color so that none of their deaths would be in vain. After the events of that night, we receive fragments of what happened to Licinius following his escape. He rushed headlong into the desert night, running until he could no longer see any pursuers behind him. He had escaped the murderous Nomads, but in doing so he had completely lost himself in the desert. His men had followed the nile on the journey south - but now he was alone, without food, water, or direction. He had escaped a relatively quick death to find himself facing a death that was far slower and crueler. He did not know how long he aimlessly wandered the desert, for all he knew repeating the same circuit dozens or hundreds of times, but he estimated that it was less than four days as he did not perish from thirst. At some point emeraph bled from the cloth and into the environment. In a handful of sand he saw one grain that was instantly recognizable from all the rest - emeraph. A distant, pitiful cloud was not white but that indescribable hue. Licinius, always

a rational man, theorized that these emeraph sightings must have been an illusion brought about thirst, starvation, and sun. When Licinius had all but lost hope of ever seeing the Imperial city again, he encountered a dark-skinned traveler and his slave, mounted on camels. The traveler must have been a wealthy man - he wore robes dyed with purple and other rich colors, and traveled with a slave whose sole purpose was to hold a palm frond over his head to shield him from the sun. The Slaves camel was weighed down with food and provisions. Licinius, his Roman pride long buried in the sand, begged the traveler on his knees for water. The traveler withdrew a flask of water, held it to Licinius eye level, and laughed as he slowly spilled droplets into the sand. Licinius desperately tried to communicate with the traveler, who showed no recognition of Latin, or the centurions shaky Egyptian. But as Licinius stammered Egyptian with little hope, he noticed recognition in the eyes of the Slave. More precisely, the slaves eyes filled with the sorrow that belongs to a man forced out of his native land, a sorrow that Licinius had seen in the eyes of many men. With the Egyptian slave as an interpreter, Licinius tried to explain his situation to the apathetic traveler, asking for water and transport to an Egyptian settlement. His case made no impact on the man. Licinius realized that his only hope woud be to try to offer something valuable to the traveler. But he had shed everything of value; he had left his sword somewhere in the desert, in an attempt to unburden himself as much as possible. He was about to accept defeat when he realized that he was still carrying an object of limitless value - the small scrap of the emeraph dyed robe. Almost as soon as the idea formed, he abandoned it. Trade the emeraph? It was out of the question, that small piece of fabric is what all

of his men and quite possibly he will die for. But then he felt the pain in his stomach, the dryness of his throat, the sun boiling his brain. He reached into his robe and tore a small scrap, a quarter of the cloth, and clasped it in his closed fist. He told the traveler, robed in rich and exotic colors, that he had a cloth of a secret color, a color that the traveler has never seen in any dye or in nature, a color more precious than diamonds. For the first time, the traveler shows interest, his face lighting up with greed. Licinius raised his closed fist close to the travelers eyes, and then opened it slowly and carefully, as if holding a delicate insect that may perish at the slightest touch. The traveler was amazed, he fixed an expression usually reserved for prophets that have seen gods reveal themselves. Through the slave, Licinius informed him that he would give him the scrap in exchange for food, water, and safe passage back to Egypt. Licinius added that if the traveler were to deceive him in any way, he would swallow the scrap. The traveler agreed, gave Licinius food and water and allowed him to travel on the slaves camel to Heracleus, one of the southern Egyptian cities. It is after he reaches Heracleus that Licinius narrative becomes fragmentary, giving less of a narrative and more an account of transactions and passages. In Heracleus, a remote city far from the Roman reins of control, he was jailed by the local authorities for begging in the streets during a holy day - a serious offense. Unable to prove who he was, his armor, weapons, and men gone, and unsure of how long he would be jailed, he bribed a prison guard with another corner of the wondrous scrap in order to slip out in the night. He had to make his way out of the city and head to Alexandria as soon as possible, and was forced to barter away another quarter for passage up the Nile on a barge.

After a long journey he reached Alexandria, safely under the imperial sun. Licinius, bearded and emaciated, found his commanders at the Roman garrison and convinced them that he was indeed Licinius Blaetus, centurion and sole survivor of the southern expedition. Licinius decided not to show the commanders emeraph - he was afraid that they would have him killed and take the cloth themselves to present to Caesar. Licinius account becomes filled with paranoia. He started to view everyone around him with suspicion. Any man, woman or child, Roman or Egyptian that looked at him was a potential thief, a plotter eying the final piece of amazing cloth that he hid in his robe. He kept one finger on it at all times, in case a pick pocket attempted to snatch it away from him. Licinius obtained passage to Rome aboard a small Roman vessel. However, fate had one last cruelty to inflict on Licinius before his odyssey was completed. Midway through an otherwise unremarkable journey, Phoenician pirates boarded the small vessel and easily overtook the crew. The pirates were after gold rather than blood. They did not wantonly slaughter the passengers, but rather told each man that they may keep their lives in exchange for items of value. The first man the pirates examined claimed that he was a poor farmer who had nothing with him except for the robes on his back. Without hesitating one of the pirates ran him through, and after thoroughly searching the dead mans robes, found a string of pearls. The other passengers were quick to produce anything of value. Licinius waited as the pirates inspected each man. He considered jumping off deck into the water, to peacefully join the sea with the final scrap of emeraph still clenched in his fist. But in the end, he surrendered the last piece of evidence to what he saw in the Nomads camp.

Satisfied with the loot they received from the crew, the pirates allowed the survivors to complete their passage. This is where Licinius account ends, a man arriving in Rome who has nothing left to live for. One must wonder if death at sea would have been a preferable fate to what Licinius had to endure for the rest of his life - a total, overpowering obsession with something that he could never communicate to his fellow man. The possession and loss of emeraph made Licinius a foreigner in his own country, a man whose eyes and mind were forever on a thing he could tell to no man. It is not known how long after the events Licinius wrote the account, or what his final fate was. There is a document contemporary to Licinius time, from the writings of the minor Roman historian Fulvius Egnatius that speaks of Licinius the mad a old man who begged for crumbs at the circus that claimed to be a former centurion. He had gained a sort of infamy among circus beggars for the strange tale he rambled to anyone who made the mistake of dropping him a coin, a tale about a lost color that he had once seen in the uncharted lands south of Egypt. Those citizens of Rome enduring a beggars ramblings were not the last ones to hear of emeraph. In fact, many more people than Licinius, the traveler, the prison guard, and the pirates may have seen it. Emeraph appears again in history between the logs of traders, the books of merchants and the journals of buyers, just to vanish into time once again. A merchant in Byzantium, Aristokles Xanthos, recorded a transaction 654 A.D.; 300 gold coins for a single scrap of cloth, the size of a quarter of his palm. In a margin he explained the seemingly foolish trade with note expressing that the tiny piece of fabric was dyed a color rarer than any diamond.

A largely forgotten Saxon tale, written from an oral legend, describes the quest of a warrior to find a cloth, no longer or wider than a mans thumb, of a color seen by no man. Abd al-Samad, a Moorish ruler from the 12the century, was famously murdered by one of his body guards, who vanished from Moorish Spain with Abd al-Samads most prized wife. Some accounts of the Moors murder claim that the woman was not the real prize that the bodyguard sought. Rather, the reason for the murder was to steal a small piece of fabric that the Moor proudly displayed in his palace, a cloth whose color made it more valuable than all the the lands he reigned over. In 1589 Elizabeth I sent envoys to Russia to establish trade. In a letter, one of the English envoys describes the wonders of the Czars treasury. Among the precious stones and metals, one object transfixes the Englishman. He tells the Virgin Queen that the Czars most prized treasure was a simple fabric swatch the size of his fingernail, encased in a jeweled glass display like it was the remains of a saint. The czar drew their attention to the mysterious dye, a color that that his predecessor, Ivan the Terrible, had been obsessed with trying to replicate for his court robes a fruitless task that led to the executions of many royal tailors and artisans. There is at least one other mention of the cloth among the Kremlins treasures, by an Orthodox monk in 1802. It has vanished since - perhaps a victim of the revolution. The last possible appearance of emeraph in written history comes from the journal of Commodore Matthew Perry, the American naval commander who sailed to Japan in 1854 to open it to the West. On March 3rd, 1854, Perry wrote that he sent a a sailor, with a generous amount of cash, on shore to purchase a gift for his wife at the market place in Kanawaga. The sailor asked Perry what he should look for, and Perry simply told him to bring back the most

beautiful thing he could find. That evening the sailor returned his ship to tell Perry that he had found a wonderful gift at the market for the Commodores wife - a tiny, beautiful cloth, but he would need much more money from Perry if he was to buy it at the next market day. Infuriated, Perry accused the sailor of stealing his money and making up a ridiculous cover story in order to rob him of more money. The sailor denies this, insisting that this amazing piece of fabric was worth every penny of the asking price. Testing the far fetched tale, Perry asked the sailor what the color of the cloth was. The sailor pauses for a long time, seemingly deep in thought. Finally he tells Perry that he cant say what the color was. With that, Perry declares him a thief and locks him away in the brig for the entire journey back to the United States. If we take these accounts as truth, they give credence to a theory proposed by several historians. emeraph has not vanished completely, but rather it was traded or taken from the original possessors and passed as a strange treasure throughout the world, changing hands and shape through the centuries. Even now, historians are discovering new documents and records of a color that no language has a word for. Somewhere in the world, emeraph still exists. We cannot know in what condition, in what size or shape, and in what hands. And until one of those scraps reappears, what it is. Very very good. I like how the story evolves from a story purely about the expedition into the destruction of a man then nally to the continued mystery of the cloth. No real notes other than relating each person's encounter to the cloth to be as magical as it was for Licinius. It would be a great way to complete the story and have an arc from beginning to the end.

The World This was the way it went: the Princess was the most beautiful girl in the world. Her skin was like the porcelain of China, her eyes were the cold blue of the Northern glaciers, her hair was the golden color of the sun. Barons and Counts and Sultans and Chieftains and Emperors came from every corner of the world to ask for her hand in marriage. The Princess told them each the same thing; she would be their beloved forever if they would give her the world. The Barons and Counts and Sultans and Chieftains and Emperors said that this was impossible and instead offered her thousands of slaves, exotic beasts and birds,

rooms filled with diamonds, cities made of gold. But each time she sent them and their gifts away. She was the most beautiful creature in the world, and it should belong to her. One day a White Knight of great faith arrived at the court of the king. He was known both for his great deeds, and his pure, pious heart. Many women had pined for the White Knight, but he had no interest in them, only his faith. But when the White Knight arrived he was struck by the beauty of the Princess. Her beauty is as pure as my faith. We shall be one. This is what the White Knight thought. When the courtiers told him that it would be impossible, that the Princess had turned down the regents of every nation, the White Knight only offered them a blank, stoic stare. Their words did not concern him. He was a servant of faith, and faith served him. For him, winning the hand of the Princess was not a question. When she told him that she needed the world in return for marriage, he did not scoff at such an unattainable demand and offer her riches in its place as the others had. He told her that he would find the world, and bring it back to her. Armed with his faith he had mutilated dragons, toppled wicked rulers, recovered sacred treasures. This would be no different. When the White Knight stepped outside the palace, a beggar approached him. The beggar told him that there was a mountain, the tallest in the world, and the world could be found atop it. An old Hermit held the world there, as he had from the first day. It was there that this White Knight would find the world. The White Knight traveled for a year to find this mountain. Once he found it, it took him three years to climb it. No matter how perilous and tiring his journey was, he had only to think of the beauty of the Princess to keep him on his quest.

The White Knight finally found the Hermit at the top of the world. He was tall, with a long white beard. He held the world in his cupped hands, below his chest. It was a blue orb with spots of green, streaked with milky white. When the White Knight looked at it, he was amazed. He could see the waves in the ocean, watch every ship cross its waters, and watch the great monsters of the sea approach them. He could see every kingdom at once, watch all of the great battles. He looked upon the legendary places that man had searched for; the shine of El Dorado, the city of the Amazons. He could gaze at all the lands that mankind had never dreamed of. He could see the lands where people had no heads but great eyes in their chests, the islands where people with the heads of dogs built great pyramids to blind gods. He could see every woman in the world, but especially his princess. You may take the world, the Hermit told him. I have carried it for so long, and I have grown tired. The Knight was overjoyed by the completion of his quest, and eagerly held his arms out to embrace the orb. There is just one rule, the Hermit said. While you hold the world, you must never look at it. The rule cannot be broken or amended; those with pride cannot be its guardian. The White Knight nodded at the Hermit solemnly. the White Knight gladly accepted the sphere and began his long descent to reach the Princess. The descent down the mountain was much harder with the tremendous weight of the world in his arms. The White Knight began to wonder if he could look upon the mountain in the orb. With that view, he could see every passage and hidden route through the mountains. He remembered the warnings of the Hermit. But the White Knight thought again of his faith. He thought of himself looking into the orb, finding the passage, returning to the Princess faster.

What he had proclaimed for himself and held faith in had never faltered, this should be no exception. Sure of his plan, he disregarded the warnings of the Hermit and looked into the sphere. He scanned the green until he saw the tallest rocks jutting out of it, locating his mountain. He looked closer, to find paths. As he searched, he was shocked to see a solitary white spot amid all the grey. Curios as to what it could be, he looked closely at the white spot. The white spot was a figure, holding an orb. He was looking so close that he could see the mountains in the orb the white figure held, in which there was another white figure holding an orb. Fascinated, he held the world as close to his eyes as he could to look at how long the pattern continued. The White Knight looked for its end but it defied the laws of time and stretched on forever, as all of the White Knights stared into the other through their own worlds. He was astounded, mystified. He had only known one time, a linear and simple thing, that began with the creation and ended with the final judgement. This vision was outside of his understanding, outside of his faith. For the first time his faith, which had soured like a rotting fruit into the sin of pride, faltered. His gaze was broken as the distracted knight slipped on a stone below him and fell to his knees. The world flew out of his hands and began to bounce down the mountains, where it shattered into a thousand pieces on a great stone. Within the sphere, the white figure dropped his orb and it shattered. And so each of the White Knights dropped the orb within every one of their orbs, at the smallest fragment of a moment after the preceding orb smashed. So The White Knight never reached the Princess, instead doomed to be the destroyer of the world, a world that would he would end for eternity.

No changes. Loved it.

Let Us Sit In The Shade Johnny Ray Curtis wakes up at 10:46 AM on the last day of his life. The gentle sunlight streams in through the dusty windowsill and it gently reflects off of his cataracts. He gathers his strength to raise his right hand to his forehead, where he feels a sickly heat. Johnny strains his ears and listens for foot steps, hearing none. Jayne? Jayne? Are you here darlin? Johnny rasps out. He takes a deep breath and raises his voice as loud as he can.

Jayne! You here today? Jayne? Jayne is your sweet little ass in my home? Or are you just whorin today? Johnny starts to laugh from his last exclamation, his chuckles ending as he realizes that he is most definitely alone in the great, crumbling mansion. Jayne had told him that she wouldnt come back and didnt gave a damn whether he died after he had called her a harlot and thrown a glass of water across the room at her after she refused to give him his whiskey. He missed, but that didnt seem to affect her thinking. Johnny Ray remembered the days when he used to sit in bed and throw knives into his door. Big ones, small ones, sometimes even the odd hatchet. They always landed perfect, always stuck. The room is filled with stale air. On the wall to his left are rows and rows of framed records. He fixes his eyes on a bookshelf on the wall. He realizes what he must do on his final day, and attempts to pull himself out of bed. He slides across to the edge, and lets his legs dangle at the sides. He slowly and carefully lowers each foot to the carpet, as if taking the first step into a scalding jacuzzi. With each foot planted on the carpet he begins to rise, but falls into a coughing fit, dropping to his knees as he holds his chest. When the coughing ends he thinks about making one more stand, standing like the strong southern man he was on his final day, but resigns himself to be a dying man on his knees. He shuffles himself to the bookshelf, laying a hand on the old cedar. He looks at the contents: books that he had never read, newspaper and magazine clippings, and rows of framed pictures. The pictures show the same man, a different era of his life crammed into each frame. Two young boys, standing side by side, each filthy and holding a fishing rod with their bare feet in a stream, smile out of a black and white 1942. A twelve year old with a wild grin sits at the

stool of his first piano. A young man in a white suit flashes a glorious smile as he stands at the top of the exit stairs of a private plane, his long hair blowing in the wind as one hand stretches out to grasp the sun. At the end of this row of pictures is a dust covered mirror reflecting a wrinkled, gnarled face, last whisps of white hair falling off, the stare of deaths eyes. He reaches his hand up and grabs a worn, black book at the end of the second shelf. He wraps his gnarled fingers around the wrinkled leather, and as he slides it out he loses his grip and it falls to the ground with a heavy boom. Johnny whispers Forgive me and crawls to the book, picking it up in his claw hands and resting his back against the shelf. He lets one hand caress the wrinkled cover, bits of it chipping off at his touch. His fingers pass over where Holy Bible is written in gold relief. Johnny Ray Curtis opens up his great grandfathers bible and looks for redemption for a damned soul on its last day. The book creaks to life as dust falls from its yellow, stained pages. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. - Psalm 23:1 *** I want her young, but not the sort of young that would get anyone involved with any kind of bullshit, OK? Johnny speaks into the phone before returning it to the console in the middle of the limousine. Its summer in Japan, and the limousines air conditioning is broken. Hes sweating right through his white western shirt, pink skin showing beneath the wet spots under his arms and beneath his neck. A hand shining with rings - on his index finger a tiny, gleaming piano with a little diamond for each key - reaches up to wipe the sweat from his brow, long hair tickling his knuckles. He sighs, and pours Hennessy into a shaking tumbler.

Johnny Ray hands the bellboy a sweaty hundred and walks into the Presidential suite. Laid out on the island in the kitchen is everything that he had asked for on his rider. Five bags of Fritos, a bottle of Jameson Rarest Vintage, two liters of Dr. Pepper, a warm plate of nachos grande, his latest vinyl, a collection of local newspapers and magazines that he wont read, and a fresh pressed white western shirt with roses running along the stitching. He opens up a bag of Fritos and slides one fried, salty piece of corn into his mouth and chews it without interest. He drops the bag to the white carpet and steps on it, and listens to them crunch under the heel of his boot. He crosses the room, glancing at the Tokyo skyline through the floor to ceiling windows that make up the east wall of the suite. He opens the door to the master bedroom and sees the final, most anticipated listing on his rider; the Asian girl lying against the oversized pillows that lay at the bed frame, pillows that threaten to swallow up the petite girl. Johnny Ray kicks off his boots and steps into the bed, feeling all the immaculate silk and linen wrinkle and fold under his weight as he crawls towards her, as if treading on virgin snow. She pouts her lips and says I want you in a thick accent the way that you would say Would you like an apple pie with your order? Johnny Ray reaches his hand down to his crotch, pushing his palm against the tight jeans as he opens his mouth to say I want you. But as he does so, he thinks of want, of what he wants and who he wants and suddenly the striking whiteness of the room, of the bed, of the girl fills his eyes and its just too much but before he can shut them he sees her, her beneath the shade of the magnolia, and its too late and he cant stop it and he says: I want you.

*** Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgression; according to your steadfastness love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! Psalm 25:7 Johnny Ray sits by himself at the edge of the cot in the back room of the dilapidated farm home. He stares at his hands, tracing the lines with his fingers. He hears the creaking sounds of boots crossing termite riddled floorboards, and his heart begins to race. His hands start to fly about him, he looks up and down and to his sides in rapid succession, and ultimately decides to sit as straight as he can, staring at the wall as the door opens and his fathers boots cross the room. He looks at his fathers boots, how they stand flat on the ground while his bare feet hover above the floorboards. Johnny, how could you tell a lie to your ma? said a strong, old voice. Pa, Im real sorry, I told ma that I was real sorry too but she- Johnny, it aint me and your ma that you gotta be sorry to. You gotta be sorry to Jesus. You did him wrong Johnny. You know what happens when you do him wrong? As he speaks Johnnys father pats the old leather bible that he holds in his lap. I go to hell. Johnny said in a weak voice, staring at his dirty feet. His father grabbed him by his cheeks, violently twisting his face to his. Look at your pa when you speak? Where you gon go Johnny? His father shouts, any patience now gone. Hell! Where are you going when you die?

Hell! Hell! Johnny shouts as burning tears fall down his face. *** A man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls Psalms 25:28 His nose consumed the white line atop the jet black Steinway grand like Pacman eating a line of white dots. Cigarette butts were strewn atop the $50,000 piano, some ashed against the keys. Perspiring glass cups filled with melting ice cubes and whiskey left wet rings on the wood. Johnny Ray stood up from the stool and scratched his bare chest. One of his songs, a rollicking whirlwind of piano riffs and yelps plays from a record player. The record player starts skipping, repeating the same high pitched rebel yell as he looks at bodies in various states of undress strewn across the room. He feels the cocaine hit him somewhere between kicking the record player with his boot and walking to the kitchen to look for Fritos. He starts to pace about the room, forgetting what he was looking for, and walks back to the living room where he crosses a broken screen door to the patio. A woman is dancing nude in the center, while a group of hazy eyed men - some friends, some total strangers, look on. Johnny Ray hears a barking sound coming from the corner of the patio and sees a pug growling at a fat man lapping at its water dish. He snaps out of his stare as he feels a hand on his shoulder. Johnny.... slurs a man with long, flowing hair and round glasses. Johnny, Petes been looking for you. He says that he read something of yours that he found in your room. He wants to talk to you about it, says it was the most beautiful thing he ever read.

Chuck, I dont know what the fuck he could be talking about. Johnny says rapidly Well, hes right over there, next to the grill. Waiting for something to get done. Johnny starts walking to the grill, the setting and the people out of focus, all the music and sound and conversation seem to be coming at him wrong. He feels like he knows no space beyond this wood patio, lit by four burning tiki torches, with great darkness on each side. He finds Pete by the grill eyeing a fat sausage as it drips grease on the griddle. His eyes fall on Johnny and fill with excitement. Johnny boy!, he exclaims I been lookin all around for you. I read that song you wrote. Johnny eyes him, noticing a great barbecue sauce stain coloring the front of his unbuttoned dress shirt. Boy, what in the fuck are you talking about? Why, no one could find ya I went up to your room to see if youd passed out in bed or somethin. And I found it lyin on your dresser. It was written out on plain paper, the notes and the lyrics. Johnnys gut tightens as he realizes whats coming next, the strong, good buzz that he had worked up all night turning bad and sour. He thinks of what to say to Pete to just get him to shut up before he loses it, but its too late and he sees Petes grease stained lips say, Helen. It was called Helen. Johnny Ray launches himself at Pete, whose glazed eyes fill with shock. He wraps his fingers around Petes neck and shouts, Dont you ever fucking read what I have out! Do you think I just write everything for your goddamned eyes? Dont you fuckin say it! He pushes Pete to the ground and staggers away, pushing past all the bystanders to reach the broken screen door.

He walks through the house, stepping on passed out couples as he reaches the stairway, taking them two at a time until he reaches his room. He grabs the sheets of paper on the dresser, and as he touches them he sees her and the magnolia and the white cotton dress stained green with grass but the girl and the tree and the summer afternoon break into shards as he crumples the paper and starts to tear it, throwing the shards into the air as he slumps against the wall, pounding it until his hands run red with blood and the skin from his knuckles is raw. *** When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you: when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. Isaiah 43:2 The bible tumbles from Johnny Rays limp hands, landing on the floor with a gentle thump. Johnny doesnt have to touch his head to know that hes burning up now, and he cant read any longer. His eyes water, sweat drips from his bald scalp and his tongue hangs dry and stale in his mouth. Johnny Ray tries to stand up, grabbing onto the bookshelf with one arm for support, but halfway into his ascension, he tumbles, falling on his stomach onto the floor. He begins to cough, a cough that he feels in his entire body, and when he opens his eyes he sees a red stain on the carpet next to his mouth. He begins to drag himself across the carpet to the bathroom, begging for water, feeling like a doomed man crawling through the Sahara as the fever boils his brain. The rough bristles of carpet rub his face as his mind flashes with images and voices

Johnny how do you want it? You play that church organ just beautiful, boy Do you realize what youre going to be receiving? Elray caught two fish! Yes boy, this is the life Johnny pushes himself forward, struggling with every inch, the blades of grass tickling his face. His eyes squint in the June sunlight and he sees two young boys walk up the dirt path, a cloud of brown dust swirling in their wake. Both of the boys are wearing jean overalls, their legs wet and slick with mud. One is tall with blonde hair; the other has messy brown hair and is waiting for a front tooth to grow. Johnny Ray reaches a hand out to them in desperation. Boys, boys, help me! You gotta get me some water...Im...I think Im gonna die. The shorter boy with brown hair walks over to Johnny and touches his shoulder, then kneels down and looks into Johnnys eyes. Am I goin to hell pa? Are they gonna make me go to hell? Johnny rasps to the boy as his eyes pool with tears. The boy flashes him a smile, a big funny smile with one front tooth and something about it makes Johnny Ray giggle and he doesnt feel so thirsty anymore. Johnny Ray manages to stand, with the help of the boy and starts to walk slowly, crookedly up to the dirt path. He walks for a long time, and he looks behind himself to ask the boys where hes going but theyre gone. Johnny just shrugs and starts to skip and jump up the path with his little mud stained legs. He puts a dirty finger in his mouth and tastes the rich, wet, earthy taste and feels the mushy sore spot where his ma says another tooth will grow soon.

On the top of the hill there is a single magnolia in full summer bloom. Under it is a young girl wearing a white cotton dress green with grass stains. Freckles are sprinkled across her face, still fresh with baby fat, and her hair is long and red and wild. She runs her hand, cuticles filled with dirt, through her strawberry red hair. She speaks in a sweet, comforting voice. Come, let us sit in the shade.

I want to lm this...

Home The doorman smiles at him as he enters his home on Newbury Street. He tastes the warm, aromatic air and runs a hand through his long hair. Hes thankful to be out of the chill of Boston winter. All of his butlers, all of his maids are lined around him, beaming mouths filled with Chiclets. His domain opens up around him. Great mahogany wardrobes and bookshelves blossom at his touch. Fat, shining china vases sit atop them like budding flowers. Trophies and and portraits of revered athletes, of great Americans line the walls. His fine clothes, silk and cashmere and leather and wool, are stacked on the shelves.

Our trim-fitting blazer is impeccably tailored in soft, pinstriped, Italian cotton twill and finished with subtle Western-inspired accents for a rugged approach to a sophisticated silhouette. A floor to ceiling mirror, framed with gold leaf, shows the man to himself. He knows that hes beautiful, so he smiles back. He has the beauty of ten Valentinos, the swagger of twenty Kennedys, the bronzed, lusty glory of forty Cape Cod summers, the style of fifty McQueens, the grace of sixty Cary Grants. He walks to the end of the palatial room, maids swooning in love as he waves goodbye. His feet click up a short flight of stairs that opens to a hallway. On each side of the hallway sketches of himself in every style of suit in the Twentieth Century smile back at him. The room before him is dominated by a great billiard table with soft, purple felt. His old friends smile at him from black and white portraits on the wall: Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Paul Newman. How did you make it all this way? Sinatra had said, pouring a glass of Don Perion in the crowded restaurant, whirling and buzzing and spinning with light, music, smells and laughter. To this day the man can still remember sitting there, front row seats in Manila, getting a wink from Ali just before the bell. Chalking is really key, Newman had said, hunched over a pool table Get that right amount right on the cue, and youll sink them just beautiful. He missed them. Impeccably tailored in Italy from sleek, all-season wool gabardine with smart pinstripes, handfinished details and a clean, modern fit. Body width is lean, arms are slightly narrow and pant is cut slim with a lower rise.

A bottle of wine on the bench in the park, green paint chipping. He leaves this room, heart heavy with lost years, and starts up the grand staircase, gripping rosewood. The paintings hang all over the wall, frames of a hundred different sizes. The paintings looks like little square chocolates in an assorted box. Five bulldogs on a heater, cigars clenched between drooling jaws. The H.M.S, Dauntless sails out of Boston Harbor, the mast and hull made of a thick impasto. Polo players ride in a summer of eternal watercolors. He has reached his favorite room in the house. Glass shelves filled with his books on cars, his trophies and collectibles. At the far side of the room a fire burns under the ivory mantle. Two men in vests and puffy sleeves, his personal tailors, greet him. Suits hang everywhere in this room, his great walk-in closet. He takes one of the suit jackets off of the hanger and puts it on. Our gentleman's two-button sport coat is impeccably tailored in Italy with a sleek, contemporary fit in all-season wool gabardine. A cold night, under the bridge in the gardens. A mirror shines back his reflection. The man staring back at him gives a thumbs up. He sees a woman in the mirror. A beautiful woman, getting closer. Her heels click as she walks briskly towards him, and her tightly pulled back bun of hair bounces with each step. Who is this? he thinks as he looks at her lips, shimmering like a melted red freeze pop. The lipstick lets him remember that this beauty is his wife. He wonders how he could have ever forgotten her, his love. Still so lovely and so young. The man slowly brings a hand to his own face and feels a beard, gnarled and crusted by snowflakes. Have I become old?, he thinks. The room, his home,

starts to feel alien and distant as if it and all of his history are running away from him. He looks to his wife for stability and puts his hand around her slender waist as she comes within reach. However, the tender moment with his wife is interrupted by a staccato of feet running up the stairs. Three stern looking men in black, invaders in his own home rush into the room. Two of the invaders grab the man and pull him away from the shrieking woman. Did he hurt you? No, but he still touched me with those filthy hands. It just makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Weve been getting a lot of calls like this lately. Even businesses gotta watch who is going through their doors. In the last few weeks we would notice him out in the street, staring into the windows. He stepped into the foyer once last week, but timidly turned away. Didnt really look like trouble A cashier adds to one of the officers, as the other two restrain the man. The homeless man is carelessly dropped on the curb outside of the Ralph Lauren store by the police officers. He feels the chill of New Englands cruel winter again, and buries his hands into his moldy, ragged, and stained coat. Our handsome, refined blazer is impeccably tailored in Italy for a contemporary fit in smooth, cool cotton.
Brilliant. Maybe stagger the revelation that something in the story is off. Reference oddities in smell or location or dress or physique. Just a suggestion. Length is good.

1968 The zombies shuffled slowly towards the home, legions of undead covered in make up and chocolate syrup captured in glorious 8 mm and projected across the great black wall. The mashing of gums on popcorn so buttery youll never realize how stale it is, salt puckered lips sucking Dr. Pepper through straws, undead tearing through flesh, screams of doomed heroines, teenage tongues and mouths meeting in dark corners. I sit in the theater, my shoes sticking to the floor, a floor whose contents are as mysterious and unsavory as the carpet of a rain forest, watching a Halloween season midnight movie, Night of the Living Dead. Mary is next to me, and she is doing what all couples at a late night horror show are supposed to do; she lays her head on me, holds my hand in hers, and squirms against

me at moments, either scared or just trying to play the role. I dont respond to her, my hand sits limp and cold in hers. Feeling never enters our embrace. Im not in her world, the world of Pepsi soaked floors and squeaking seats, but in the grainy black and white movie world. All the people here see this as entertainment or a chance to date, but I recognize something deeper, something beautiful in the eyes of every character as they look at the zombie invasion outside their windows Something terrible is going to happen, every strip of film whispers. I walk Mary home, but my hand is still limp in hers, and her words flutter by and bounce off of me. I can only think of the undead, their gaunt, pulled faces dripping with blood, waiting behind each suburban hedge, in the shadow outside the glow of each sickly yellow street light. My fear isnt of a decaying hand grabbing my shirt, pulling me towards its mouth of disease. No, my fear is that one of these creatures will recognize me as its own. I lay on my sofa watching the news. Walter Cronkite speaks through a bushy mustache about LBJs decision to send 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours. The war is fought with technicolor each evening in my parents living room. Hueys gracefully hover above river valleys that reveal themselves behind jungle mountains. An aerial shot of land covered in napalm, little burning patches springing up until it looks like a lite-brite. TAKA-TAKATAKA-TAKA, AK-47s ring out in the TV night, like the song of some strange bird, hidden and undiscovered deep in the jungle. As I fall asleep, I swear that I see news footage of a Marine aiming his carbine as a zombie shuffles towards him out of the bush. The Marine fires at it, clipping away flesh and bone, but the zombie in a PAVN uniform stalks closer and closer. Destroy the brain, I think and melt into sleep.

The next Friday I go with Mary and some of her friends to see Night of the Living Dead at another midnight showing. We walk there, taking advantage of one of the final fall evenings. Guess what time it is? Mary exclaims, pressing her rail thin body against me excitedly. I shrug. She grins, pointing to her watch. 11:11! Make a wish! I continue walking in the moonlight, aware that she is watching me, hoping for some response. What did you wish for? She asks. Id rather keep that to myself. They say that wishes dont come true if you say them out loud. I say watching the perky grin on her face deflate like a balloon. Soon Im back in the black and white world, watching the desperate heroes try to hack off undead limbs clawing through broken windows and barricades. I start thinking of what Id do in a zombie invasion. How to make window barricades, stash food.....store weapons. I slip away in daydream, and I can see the film heroes in army fatigues, the undead approaching in Viet Cong uniforms, burnt and shot and broken but still slowly shambling forward. Im shaken awake, my dream dissolving as Mary grips my hand, as the shriek of a dying actress fills the theater. I dont respond to her. She leans forward to kiss me, but when I look into her face in the twilight of the movie light, it looks sallow, sickly. Dead. I pull away from her, and look at my shoes while I sip flat soda. On the way home, Mary tells me that shes had it with me. That I have become so distant, I dont care about her, I dont respond to her, Im not who I used to be. She doesnt

understand why I withdrew my decision to attend Princeton on a full scholarship at the last minute. Ever since then Ive been different, she says. You were at the top of the class for as long as I knew you. You had it all figured out. But something in you just died. These complaints come to me with little surprise, and I can only shrug and offer the occasional mumbling that not even I can make out. Its all true. I walk her back to her house in silence, and I can hear her begin to sniffle as she reaches the porch. The week slithers by, each day growing duller and grayer. The undead are no longer scurrying behind trimmed hedges, hiding under porches. They are staring at me with their empty sockets. Their vermin chewed lips whisper to me. At dinner, my father is stern. I can tell by the way he over chews each bite of food that he is about to tell me something important, something rehearsed during his work commute for days. When it is absolutely impossible for the meatloaf to be chewed further, he straightens up in his chair and shoots his index finger towards me. Son.. looking for more words, he chews the inside of his cheek. You know how we felt about your decision with college. But its your own life. Your mother and I have respected that choice. He shoots a glance towards my mother who offers a stoic nod of approval while handling a gravy boat. But we expected you to make another path for yourself. Weve seen none of that. I wonder if my father is capable of swallowing his cheek. I think of what his nervous teeth must be doing to his mouth as it grinds the soft pink flesh within. Son, I think that its time you sought some sort of job. You need to pay your own way.

I havent responded to any of this, instead testing how many bites a single stem of asparagus can sustain. My father stops chewing his cheek and leans in forward towards me, tilting his head. Where is your future? ..an average 800 tons of explosives were dropped each day during Operation Rolling Thunder... Speaks the narrator of the technicolor war blaring in front of us. Beginning just on time at eight oclock. Its the day before Halloween, midnight, and Im at Night of the Living Dead by myself this time. I watch the monochrome house in the field, zombie hordes amassing around it like ants to a spilled pixie stick. The camera gets closer to the house, the shot shaky and convoluted as the camera man runs. The house is no longer in a field; it is in a suburb. The camera man, audibly panting, pans the camera across the paint chipped windowpanes and then into the open window. Its my house. I see myself sit in an armchair in the living room in August, and I open an envelope addressed to me and read it over five times and turn it upside down and sideways and read it again until I realize Ive been drafted. The color melts from my house, collecting on the floor and drains through cracks in the tiles. My world is drenched in grainy black and white and I see the undead banging on my windows, their dead eyes piercing me. I hear shuffling feet on the creaking floorboards. I feel decaying hands on my neck. I see a rifle in my hands, I hear the swoosh-swoosh of my boots as I wade through a rice paddy. I hear crickets in the foreign night, I see Hueys flying over me, and the shouts and curses and prayers of all those who have died and those about to die.

The last drop of Pepsi is noisily slurped through a straw. A pack of milk duds splits open and scatters on the floor in a furious staccato.I see a blonde haired child pulling a wagon. A boy kneeling for first communion. A Valedictorian speaking at his high school graduation. Our home movies. The home movies begin to skip, stuck on a cigarette burn, and vanish completely. They are replaced by news reels, flickering napalm and scorched bodies. I put my hands over my eyes and sink to the floor on my knees. I lay motionless as they gather around me. I dont even make a sound as they begin to grab at me, tear at my clothing, sink in teeth and claws. I let the walking dead take me as their own. I really like this. De-evolution of man? Decay of man? I think that you should expand on how his obsession started, why that movie versus others, and less on his indifference to Mary. I think they'll get that already.

The Whore at Carmen Bajo It was a terrible time in my life when I went to see the whore at Carmen Bajo. Why else would I ever have gone to see the whore? The men who go to the whore do not come with expectant, excited faces, but with faces of sad resignation. They do not leave with a face awash with drunk, cheap pleasure, but masks of sadness. Pleasure is the last thing that a man can get from the whore at Carmen Bajo. Yet every man goes to see her. I would hear about her as a young boy, from the uncles who had drunk too much at dinner and gathered to talk on the porch and smoke. In high school there were two boys who claimed to have been with her. Her secret emerges from a cloud of

smoke in a bar, scrawled into an alley wall, whispered by a barber. The whore was at once everywhere, and yet completely concealed. Christ. It was a really awful run of luck. I had been roofing, during the hottest summer Cuzco had seen in years, and some fat Chilean had let the ladder fall from under me. Broken arm, no chance of compensation, worse luck trying to find more work. I had to move to a cheaper boarding house, where all the money in my room was stolen. I was left with nothing but the cash in my pants as I walked up and down El Sol, looking for any kind of work at a restaurant. What does a man do in the face of such grave misfortune? Do they lie down and accept defeat. No, not a real man. We go out with glory. I decided that I would spend the last of my money in a terrific drinking bout. I remember sitting dead drunk on the stool, hanging on to the bar for dear life. I heard a commotion behind me, raised voices and a loud crash. Some sort of fight I was too drunk to pay attention to, although I clearly heard someone shout You son of a whore. In that moment, a light went off. So important and powerful, that I stood up from the bar, awakened from the warm dream of alcohol. I would see the whore. Fix my luck. Easy as that. Have I not told you why men put themselves through that.? Ah, excuse me. I lose my focus, I become distracted. The men see the whore at Carmen Bajo for good luck. Pure and simple. Each man that fucks the whore shortly afterwards sees a change in their luck; it can range from finding a few bills on the street, to winning a fortune at at the tracks. There are many stories of the fortune the whore passes on.

I found that I still had just enough in my pockets to see the whore. I made my way down to Carmen Bajo, to the the miserable little tobacconist at number 14. Inside the dark room, smelling of rotted wood, there was just one item for sale on the table. A case of cuban cigars that had sat there for years, completely untouched. An old man was sitting at the table. He was listening to a radio, some song was on that sounded as if it was recorded underwater. It wasnt in Spanish, I dont know what the fuck it was. I had the queerest notion that it wasnt a radio broadcast, but rather some personal broadcast given to this man in code, some secret and evil message that concerned me. The man looked up at me and told me the rule, the one rule that we all knew. No one had ever broken it. Of course, everyone had a friend that knew a friend that defied it. The results varied, but were never pleasant. O the rule, I have not said that either? Eh, Im older now. I have said this too many times. The details have begun to get lost. The rule is that you can never, under any circumstances, look at the whore when you visit her. No one knows why, and no one will ask. I gave him my final bills, and the man opened the door in the back of the shop for me. It led to a dark hallway with no windows, given scarce light by a single candle on the wall. Next to the candle was a picture of a dead chicken. A very old photograph. It made me stop and reconsider the entire action. Why the fuck was that there? Who would hang that up? And if there was a candle next to it, it was meant to be shown. Something evil in that picture; something evil in that place. I should have taken that as a warning, and left then and there. But I did not. I walked down the hall, which seemed to take several minutes. I do not know how long the hall was; there were no candles aside from that picture. I found the last door, and it opened into a dark, circular, cold room made of stones. There was another door, painted

red at the middle of the room.There was a straw mattress in the center illuminated by sickly yellow light. I could hear water dripping somewhere. For a moment I also thought that I could hear the strange, alien music the old man was playing in the front room. But after straining my ears it seemed to pass, and I questioned whether I had ever heard it. A voice came from behind the door, announcing that I was to prepare myself. I cannot remember the pitch of this voice. It never occurred to me to think if it was the old man or the whore. I still cannot answer that, something that I deeply regret. I knew all too well what that meant. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, and found myself clenching my hands as well. The door opened. I had no idea what to expect in that room. We all knew about the whore, and the rules and the outcome. But in that moment, I suddenly realized that in all the innumerable, boastful tales of the whore, none of them had ever told me what happened between them and the whore in the room. I had no fucking idea. Terror seized me. I thought of running out, but I would need to open my eyes. The only thing that terrified me more than the whore was the thought of breaking the rule. Some hopeful rationals sprouted in my head. This was too fucking absurd. This couldnt be happening. My friends from the bar must have led me here. In any moment I would hear a cackle of laughter, joined by others, and open my eyes to see my friends rolling on the stone floor at how effective their joke had been. But the laughter never came. Instead, a heavy sound of breathing. There was a sound of movement. I did not think of two feet walking. Perhaps the whore wore a flowing dress that covered foot steps? I cannot say what it was.

The whore came closer. I felt a clammy, cold hand on my clothing; a deep, raspy breath close to my skin. As the hands pulled me down on the straw, I did my best not to scream. I kept thinking how the hell I let this happen. It struck me that anything could happen here. What was to say that I wasnt going to be stabbed to death in that hidden chamber? The hand of the whore took mine. I allowed the event to run its course. I figured that I could just play the role that been established by so many stories, perhaps becoming another of the stories would offer me protection. I really cant tell you what it was like. It was fucking. In the simplest sense. I had no idea who or what I was doing it to; I was thrusting, as if into space, some void that accepted it. The fucking went on. Soon I began to lose some of my fears. I allowed myself to go into the rhythm, think only of the rhythm. This led to a feeling of complacency, even comfort. I was even starting to enjoy myself; something unheard of in the stories. It continued - I really cant give you any measurement of time, it could have been a minute or a century. Yes, all the fear was gone. I was just in a black space, at peace. I was no longer in the filthy den of the secret whore, fucking on a straw mattress. So convinced of this, so at peace, that I allowed disaster to strike. I opened my eyes. Eyes. That is what I saw when I opened mine. A pair of eyes, green eyes burning in the darkness. And that was all that I would ever see. The eyes transfixed me, and I saw no other part of the whore. But still, I realized my mistake and pulled away as fast as I could, eyes closed tight again. I charged into the wall, hurting my broken arm, and groped furiously until I found the

door I had entered. I sprinted down the hallway, through the front of the shop, and fell in the street before I allowed myself to open my eyes again. In the days and weeks that followed, those green eyes were in my mind each time I closed my own. I felt those green eyes on me every time that I lost a job, each time that I was robbed, every sickness and malady that struck me. The word had spread through the dialogues of barbershops, bars, and cafe tables of what had happened between me and the whore. I had told no one, of course, but it did not matter. Some watcher must have seen me running from the door of the tobacco shop in that terrible night, eyes stunned with horror. The news spread, and soon I was identified as bad luck; no one would dare speak to me, touch me, or look me in the eyes, afraid of catching the curse. And now I have told you, a total stranger, about my shame, my curse, that I can speak to no one of. It is not my fault, I was only trying to make a change of luck. I see it in your eyes, you are kind, you understand. Kind stranger, can you give me some change? Faceless It was more like I bumped into her, bumped into her lips when we started kissing. It was dark in the hot, crowded cellar, and I really couldnt see her face. I was making attempts, at the few moments of clarity when a light would shine on her face, distanced from mine as she pulled my lower lip back with her teeth. In those moments I could see some scattered details, bits of a portrait; - a small nose ring, reaching into both nostrils. Ive never really liked nose rings. - hair that was perhaps brown, her bangs draped over her perspiring temples

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- the kind of hat that you always see hipster college girls wearing. A beret? Not a beret, its worn towards the back of the head. I really couldnt tell you what it was, besides grey. - Skin that was white and pasty, creamy like store bought vanilla frosting Each time that I would see that flash of a face, a glimpse of this girl, that cryptic face would vanish back into the dark, pulling a lip with it in pain and pleasure. Would you want to come back with me tonight? She said. I was somewhat taken aback by her forwardness, how she had decided to trust a stranger after what could have only been a few minutes of kissing. (But how is time measured in these strange Boston suburbs? Does it follow the rules?) From all that she could have known, I could have been some older creep, stalking young girls at overcrowded college parties, or the next incarnation of the Boston Strangler. Ive had fairly good luck each time this house has thrown a party. I was expecting this, I suppose. Yea. I said back to her. We had barely had a conversation. I hadnt even used any of my usual lines, telling her how I totally felt Whitman, or knew Gatsbys dream. If there is one thing studying literature can be useful for, its impressing girls that want to pretend that theyre smart. But I wasnt going to question the luck. Its nice to have it come easy, even if I cant see her face. After we had been kissing for some time, we made our way to a living room upstairs, where it was lit brightly. Looking back at this, I realize that I should have been able to see her face, see the whole girl upstairs. There were no crowds of gyrating hipsters, no dearth of light. When I look back, why cant I see her face in that room? Had I decided to not look at her altogether, had I made a choice to simply remain ignorant, neutral?

Faceless asks me a question, a question that is buried alive from the bass of the speakers blaring below the floorboards. What? What year are you? My year? Well that can depend on hers. Im 22, which I have found little difference from 18, 20, or any other year at college. Im a sophomore! She shouts. The faceless girl walks over to where her friends are sitting in an oversized armchair, a quartet of four girls who were very cute in that liberal arts college way, striped, loose shirts under American apparel cardigans. Skin tight leggings over slender legs, brown leather boots. It strikes me that all of these girls must be completely interchangeable. They all sat on the big armchair like little pixies reclining in the arms of an oak tree, giggling to one another. Faceless convenes with the pixies in their oak grove; the pixies giggle and agree. The pixies decide to get a cab. We leave the house party, and begin trekking to the T stop at Packards corner. Walking with us is a guy who is one of the pixies boyfriends (or perhaps all. And if not, all of their boyfriends must be exactly like this dude.) He wore tight black levis, a high concept indie rock T-shirt, and was continuously pulling at his small, billy goat beard with cigarette stained fingers. I learn that his name is Chuck. Chuck tells us that he will pay for the cab. A cab is hailed at the curb. Faceless and I slide into it. The pixies slide in from all angles, squealing and laughing, and in a moment of lucidity I think to myself that there must be more than four pixies now, there might be six, no nine, and they are multiplying.

As the door closes I see Chuck, standing alone at Packards corner. He holds his same stance, stroking his short, knotty beard under the yellow sodium bath of the street light. Chuck is alone, adrift in the sea of drunk bros smashing corona bottles, their flat brims closing in on him like shark fins, and I watch him grow smaller and smaller in the distance. Theres something about Chuck standing there that makes me sad. One of the pixies gives the address of their apartment to the cabby, and I can only hope that he takes us to our destination. The cabbie is an old man, with wispy white hair hanging above his rough, wrinkled head like strands of cirrus over a sun baked mesa. The pixies have been talking to the cabbie enthusiastically. Mr. Petronovich. He says to the pixies in a rich, salty Russian voice, the almost extinct voice of red villains and the Great Patriotic War, the way all Americans really want a Russian to sound. Petronovich mentions where he lived in New York when he came to this country; a pixie remarks that she lives by the neighborhood. Petronovich takes a pack of Marlboros out and passes them out to the girls, telling them to feel free to roll down the windows and smoke. As a bluish cloud begins to envelope the cab, Petronovich starts to tell a story in his magnificent voice, the voice that ordered Sean Connerys death countless times. He says that his father was in the Great Patriotic War. The girls ask him what that was, and he reminds them that this is the name given to WWII in the land of his birth. He was a a young boy when his father was reported missing on the front. After the end of the war, when Petronovich became a young man, with no family left, he went to look for his father. I notice that

Petronovich is smoking as well, and the drags that he takes are long and harsh. He sees that Im not smoking, and offers me his pack. I tell him no thanks. Petronovich continues his story. His search took him to East Germany where he found his fathers name in the records of a concentration camp for Russian prisoners of war. After this, Petronovich hit a dead end in the search for his father. He flicks his cigarette out of the window, smoked till only the sliver of the filter remains. So you never saw your father again? Faceless asks. No, I see him years later. 1963. Petronovich responds. Petronovich traveled to East Berlin to look for work. One day he was out with a girl that he had met, a girl that he really liked. I can see a warm, small smile spread over his leathery face, but it soon passes. He wanted to take her out to a bar, but not the same one that everyone from their building went to. He was broke, so it still wasnt a very classy place. But East Berlin didnt have much class anyway, he remarks with a chuckle. He was in a booth with the girl, and he noticed out of the corner of his eye that a man kept staring at them from a rickety wooden table in the corner of the room. First he thought that maybe the man was staring at his girl. He tried to ignore this man, he just wants to keep drinking beer and talking to the girl. But he couldnt stop glancing at this man in the corner. There was a lamp burning on the mans table, and Petronovich could make out his eyes. Petronovich could see the by that light that the mans eyes were fixed on him. They made eye contact, but Petronovich immediately broke it off, shocked. His heart kept beating, his palms were sweating, and he didnt know why. He wasnt afraid; he says that he was a strong man back then, a man who had won his share of brawls.

I look around the cab. Im pretty sure that I am the only one still listening to Petronovich. All of the girls, their cigarettes long burnt out, are falling asleep on each other. Faceless is almost asleep, with her head leaning against my shoulder. I look down and notice that we are holding hands. The closed storefronts on Newbury street flash by me from the window. Petronovich continues, even though I am the last listener. I dont think that he minds. The girl in the bar asked him what was wrong. He said that he had to go to the bathroom. He stood up from his booth and began to walk on the creaking wood of the pre war bar, looking at the man in the corner, feeling like his brain was about to burst. Each step brought him more of the mans face, until he was close enough to see it clearly. The man was beyond middle aged, wrinkled with sad, drooping eyes and a dirty, untended beard. His hands, set down next to his beer, were covered in burns. The man who Petronovich remembers, clean shaven and proudly wearing the uniform of the red army was not wrinkled, or bearded, or burned or broken. But as the men locked eyes both knew the truth, that they were father and son, seeing each other for the first time in over twenty years. What happened I ask. I go to bathroom. I wash my face. I come outside, and he was gone. The table was empty. I asked the girl if she saw him leave, she said he got up and dash out as soon as I close the bathroom door. She ask me if I knew him. I said no. Why? The cab stops. A pixie tells me to give a good tip, and declares that Petronovich was The Man. I hand him a wrinkled twenty and tell him to keep the change. We enter the apartment and

the pixies begin falling up the old staircase. I walk slowly behind, Faceless latched onto my arm. The apartment that her and the pixies share has the standard trappings of an average college kid apartment ; the obligatory John Lennon poster (in this case the New York City tee shirt), an orange traffic cone in the corner, an oversized Fight Club poster above the couch. Do you want to hang out in the common room with everyone for a bit...or do you just wanna hang out in my room?, She asks. I notice her voice for the first time, now that we are in an environment without music, giggling, or Russian. Its soft, even soothing. I tell her that I would like to come into her room. She smiles with excitement, and we step inside the room. Its that same feeling from every weekend, the new, anonymous girl. She puts her iPod into a pair of speakers, and it starts playing some indie folk album. She lays down on the bed, sprawling before me. I realize that I should be feeling more excited about this, and this makes me feel uneasy. I lay on top of her and we begin to kiss, and soon Im undressing her. But again, the act of taking off her bra, unbuttoning her pants is brining me no excitement, no joy. As I undress her I feel like a kid opening a christmas present that he already knows he doesnt want. As I take my pants off, I do realize that Im still hard at least. Youre cute. Faceless says, in the kind of tone that a doll speaks when you pull the string on its back. We are soon both naked. She hands me a condom in a red wrapper. I can see her face now as she lays next to the iPod, its faint blue light illuminating her. Her lips are somewhat dry, her face is creamy and blotchy, and she has a tiny brown mole next to her eye. At the same time I think of the face of Petronovichs father in the back of the bar, of his drooping sad eyes.

Without realizing it, I avert my eyes. Suddenly, I know that I have consciously avoided her face all night. She is faceless, because I want her to be. Each girl that I speak to at a party, that I caress in the backseat of a taxicab, that I lay in bed with, I want to be faceless. I try to think of the girls from the preceding weeks, months, years, and it all comes back blank. Nude, sweating bodies with pure, black, faces. Its just how I wanted it to be. I have no desire to see the different shapes of the nose, the rosy color of the cheeks, the glint of the eye, the plump of the lips. I have no more desire to see them than Petronovich has to see a dead father. I look down to put it on and see that I am now at half staff. A rapid series of curses blossom in my brain. I lay my body against hers, I begin to squeeze her tits, grope her flesh, try to make myself excited, but it only seems to make things worse. I can only think of faces, just faces even as I stick my fingers into her, and I try to think of all kinds of degrading things to do her, I can only think of that mole next to her eye, nearly in her eye, and of a man sitting in the corner of the room, sadly shaking his head at me as he looks down at his burned hands. I continue trying to enact every base desire, every animal instinct, the time for anything remotely romantic lost in my panic. I lay on my side and tell Faceless that I cant. I offer an excuse, but I cant remember what it was. I pull my boxers back on, and I climb into bed again, defeated. Faceless offers me some sort of consolation as I hold her, but once again I cannot tell you what it was. I refuse to see the face, just keep my eyes staring at the ceiling or out of the window, at a black sky. After some time I realize just how hot it is in the room. My skin is clammy and dry, and I feel our bodies sticking together. I feel like I can hear a fan in the back of the room. How and

when did it get this hot? Why would they have a fan in their room? Is it summer? Is it like the room gets hellishly hot at a certain time every night, like a werewolf at full moon, and this fan is a precaution? I never fall asleep, but rather I keep falling in and out of strange, waking dreams, lucid and feverish in this eerie heat. Im running up to my grandmothers porch in the summer. It is summer twilight, and rapidly growing darker. I stop running and I look down the alley next to her house and I see the brick wall at the end of the alley. That brick wall with a long, black mark down it, that I always thought of as a hooked hand reaching out from some place behind the wall. My feverish mind locates itself back to a long ago summer, a sweet forgotten first night summer where I stood barefoot in the wet grass and held a girl named Rose by the waist and it had been the first time and I worried that my hands felt clammy and sweaty against her smooth, brown skin. My heart pounded. She was beautiful, and dark, and where are you Rose? Rose, as you pushed your face against mine and gave me that first sweet taste. I start to feel that everything will be alright as I remember her, but I cant. In my minds eye I can only see a smooth, featureless mask with black curly hair press her face against mine. My first kiss comes from a department store mannequin. Its gone, Rose is gone. When I open my eyes again, I see movement. In the building across from her window, maybe just twenty five feet away, a man is rearranging chairs in a large room. It is a blank room, devoid of any color or decoration, and folding chairs are stacked in each corner. What do they hold there, AA meetings? I cant see the man, and I dont think that he notices me. If I had a chance, I would just like to ask him, What time is it?